the girl with all of the choices

e i g h t y - f o u r

6189 words

july fourth- orphaned

~ Addison ~

My bed was the only place I had existed during the past few days. I had been home for 50 some odd hours and I only ever left my bed to go to the loo, which wasn't very entertaining.

It had a somewhat reasonable explanation. Draco was gone. I didn't want to do anything. Everything that I would do reminded me of him. Eating food reminded me of how we cooked together in the Room of Requirement during Christmas this past year. He was a terrible chef. Showering reminded me of the time he snuck in with me last summer when he washed my hair for me and told me he had to leave. Talking to other people only reminded me further that they weren't him; they would never be him. Changing my clothes would have meant stripping me of one of the only things that made me feel like he was still here. 

So, I laid in my bed, enclosed in his clothes and the air of his cologne, for two and a half days straight.

Mum had tried to talk to me but I just ignored her. Dad told her to just let me be, that whatever this was just had to work its way through me before I could get back to normal. Fawn tried to give me company.

She had been here since she accompanied me home Tuesday evening. She had persuaded her parents to let her stay with me since she knew what was wrong. She could better care for me than my parents could. My parents had, of course, said yes to her query of living here until I could get better, but her parents were harder to convince. 

There was still a war going on. People were being murdered and going missing every day. The Ministry was somehow still standing, but that didn't mean it would be for much longer. All of the bad things seemed to not exist within the walls of school, but now that I was home, everything got much, much worse. 

Her parents weren't idiots. Muggles were even being brought into the conflict. Whole families would go missing or be found dead. I had only been home for two days but I had heard of three families having this happen to them. Staying with me would be dangerous. But, they let her stay. We were both of age and could defend ourselves if we had to. Using magic in front of my muggle parents would have been the least of our worries if it came down to that, so it would be okay.

Fawn refused to stay in the guest room. She would sleep on the window seat over by my array of plants, the same spot that Draco and I had lounged an unforgettable amount of times while he stayed here during Christmas of fifth year. 

The only thing I would do to pass the time was read and reread the copy of Romeo and Juliet that he enchanted for me that same year. The last words he said to me before he left to go up into the Astronomy Tower that night were "I love you, Addison. Check the end of your book." 

I didn't understand the meaning until Wednesday morning. I had rolled over in bed to find his gift to me, my favourite work of literature, sitting on my nightstand beside the picture frame that houses images of us at the Yule Ball and from last Christmas. Fawn must have unpacked it from my trunk while I was asleep or sobbing. Naturally, I reread it, taking in my grief with every passing page, word, and picture. 

It took me hours to get through it. Romeo and Juliet isn't a very hard piece of literature to read. I had been reading it for years. Yet, it took me hours to get through because every time I would come across a picture of us or one of his letters, I would dissolve into a heaping puddle of tears. 

It was probably just around dinner time when I found it. 

His note.

I had no idea how he even got it in there. My book had been in my room with my things for weeks. I didn't pine over it constantly as I had earlier in our relationship because I had the real Draco right there.