The Silent Order: Draco Malfoy

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling as my roommates get ready for the day around me. I have been doing this for the last few weeks. Rising from bed five minutes before class, emerging from the dungeons to attend one or two lectures per day. I've attempted multiple times to entertain myself, but living in the Slytherin dungeon breeds boredom. It's cold. There's no color. I find myself often staring through the glass into the Black Lake, hoping a fish swims by so I can watch something move around. I think the lack of stimulation is going to my head. I feel a general sense of apathy toward most things. Completely understimulated. The Slytherin kickbacks on Fridays exhaust me. I don't even dream anymore like my own mind is full of static.

Mindlessly, I stroked Millicent's cat, which had taken to migrating to my bed after its owner left for the day. A wizard without their power was awkward. Like not being able to speak after someone cuts out your tongue. Still knowing how to speak, knowing the muscle memory of speech, working the mouth to produce speech, and nothing coming out. A phantom limb.

"In a way you're totally lucky," whines Pansy. "You have been given a free pass to only do half the spring semester."

"I'm just so bored. And I still have schoolwork. Just not the fun kind," I grumbled, rolling over onto my side.

For the subjects that did not strictly rely upon theory, I had been assigned textbooks to read by Professors Flitwick, Quirrell, and McGonagall. I couldn't practice anything I learned. I just had to memorize it. And they still tested me. It's a lot harder to learn how to satiate a boggart without actually doing it. Besides, I wanted to see what my fourth-year classmates were afraid of.

You know, for academic purposes. Totally not because I had found myself in a prank war with Curtis and needed ammo. Curtis had taken to stuffing my bookbag with paper cranes that flew around uncontrollably when the bag was opened, spelling my hair neon orange for an afternoon causing Pansy to call me Weaslytherin, lending me a quill that only wrote dirty words right before an arithmancy pop quiz, and so on.

But no. I wasn't allowed into physical magic classes until my new wand arrived.

I didn't know how to retaliate against Curtis without my powers. Sure, I could still do arithmancy and history of magic, but a wizard that has been recused of their powers can't jinx their prank nemesis and concocts only impotant potions. I couldn't even poison him (in good fun, of course).

"You really should come with us down to breakfast," Daphne said.

"I'm on hunger strike until Dumbledore sees sense."

"That batty old man doesn't strike me as the kind to be bothered by that," said Millicent.

"I'm avoiding Curtis' antics and therefore I cannot eat in the Great Hall until I can threaten him appropriately," I stated, rehashing another excuse I've been using lately to avoid the outside world.

My roommates give up on trying to get me away from my bed. Daphne and Millicent leave and go to breakfast. Pansy lingerd.

She approaches my bed.

"Lil, I say this because I love you. This is weird. You're like, withering. Find a reason to get up," Pansy said. She leaves too.

She is right though. Time passes and I feel the sunlight warm our dorm through the displaced waters of the Black Lake.

I don't have class until the afternoon but I sit up anyway, startling Millicent's cat. I get out of bed. I put my clothes on. I brush my teeth. My hair. After these basic acts of self-care I feel a modicum of pride in myself.

...

I beeline for the library. I have more than enough reading to do and I will admit, I'm pretty behind due to my self-pitying hibernation. The hallways are empty as the rest of the student body attends morning classes. So much for taking classes with other students.