Dedicated | Draco Malfoy

Chapter 14

"How are you, Draco?" Mr. Belby asked him from the chair across from him.

So many things had happened since his last therapy session that Draco didn't know where to start.

"Do you remember Hannah Abbott?" he asked, not answering his therapist's question. The thing was, he didn't know how he was, if he was doing well or not. The last few weeks had been really confusing.

"Of course," Mr. Belby said. "You talked about her in your last session."

How did this man remember everything? He hadn't even looked at his notes from last time before answering the question. Did he remember everything from all of his clients? Did he have a spell to help him out?

"Well," Draco started. He shifted in his chair. "We're dating."

Mr. Belby blinked a few times, like he wasn't sure if he had heard Draco correctly. "That's great news, isn't it?" he finally said.

"Yes, it is. But things are also hard."

"How?" Mr. Belby asked.

Draco sat up straighter. "We fight a lot. And that's how it always has been. That's how it was back at school, but I don't want it to be that way anymore. I don't want to be so angry all the time."

"What do you fight about?"

"Since we're dating it's about me paying for stuff and her not wanting that. I took her to a restaurant and she insisted on splitting the bill and yesterday I sent her a gift and she didn't want it."

"Okay, how does it make you feel that she doesn't want you to pay for her?"

"Like she's rejecting me, like she doesn't want my love." His voice cracked. There was a lump in his throat, which made it harder to swallow.

"Did she tell you why she didn't want you to pay?"

"Yeah, she said that I was treating her like a child and that she could take care of herself. She said it made her feel uncomfortable."

"It doesn't sound like she's rejecting you to me. It sounds like she's telling you that this is a boundary for her," Mr. Belby explained. Draco stared at the carpet underneath his feet. God, he hated it when Mr. Belby pointed something out to him that was true but he didn't want to hear. "We know you have trouble with people setting boundaries because yours were crossed all the time when you were young." Fuck Mr. Belby. "And the feeling of rejection also isn't new to you." Fuck him even harder.

Draco was on the verge of crying now. "I just want to show her I care about her! I just want her to see that I'm trying!"

"You can show her you care in other ways than giving her gifts. Maybe you can ask her what kind of acts of love she does like."

Hmm, maybe that wasn't such bad advice. Maybe he should just try and talk to Hannah without getting angry.

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Hannah had cried herself to sleep the evening before. She knew her reaction to Draco shouting at her and him slamming the door shut was pathetic. She was just so tired of this. Tired of fighting with the people she fell in love with. Tired of them walking out on her, even when she asked them to.

When she woke up this morning, everything hurt. Her eyes, from crying. Her hands, from balling them into fists at her sides. And her heart, from Draco not listening to her when she told him she wanted to pay him back for the books.

She had tried to write this morning. But after staring at a blank page for over an hour, she had given up. She couldn't write romance stories when her own heart was hurting, when she herself at this moment just didn't believe in love.