the girl with all of the choices

n i n e t y - e i g h t

10266 words

october eighteenth- occlumency

~ Addison ~

Life was somewhat getting back to normal. 

The past Tuesday, Draco had let me try walking on my own from the bedroom to the sitting room. The best part was, I had done it. Like actually done it. I didn't fall. I didn't even stop in the doorframe to lean against it and give my legs a break for a minute. I made it to the sofa in the sitting room without even so much as reaching for him as he walked behind me, his arms extended around me in a protective bubble as if he was waiting for me to fall. 

When I reached the sofa and placed my hand on the back of it to steady myself, he ignored the space between us, effectively squashing it as he wrapped his arms around my waist, picked me up, and spun me around, laughing giddily until he placed me back down on the sofa and snogged me until I was dizzy. 

Physically, I was essentially healed. I could walk safely, to the point where I was actually planning on going back to classes next week. My scar had finally begun to bear down on the healing process, the swelling almost completely gone and the words starting to fade into pink memories engraved in my flesh. I would get headaches less, once every two or three days instead of daily. The only problem was that the tremors hadn't let up. They would only happen when I was distraught, but that would occur often, unfortunately.

Emotionally, it was a struggle. Loud noises would scare me. Things that were out of my routine or that I didn't know about in advance would give me anxiety. I hadn't stopped using Dreamless Sleep for fear of seeing Amycus or Alecto in my dreams. I would stop using it eventually. Draco and I would stop taking it together so that we could be there for each other, wrapped in each other's arms as we slept to ward off the demons. 

My hands would tremble whenever I would think about what happened too much. Or whenever any of those other things would happen. Draco knew what to do. He would place his hands on my face to get me to pay attention to him before letting his hands drop to mine, tracing circles over the pulse points and holding them until their quivering would cease. He would only give me a vial of Calming Draught if I was really upset. 

But that was just our new normal. I was partially used to it from the spring term of sixth year. The only deviation was that then, he was the one who needed comforting. Our roles had just reversed. Although, I knew he still needed consoling, just less intensely than I did. 

It was like a game of tug and war, seeing which one of us would break first. I usually won that battle. Or lost, I guess, depending on how you would see it. 

Regardless of everything that had been happening or was going to happen, today was a monumental day. Draco had agreed to help the DA.

I felt guilty once I remembered that there was something that was used to resist legilimency. If I had learnt it, if I had taken the time to sit down with Draco and truly learn what his aunt had put him through during their training sessions, I might have been able to make things incrementally better. He wouldn't have to be giving up his life to care for me. I wouldn't have scared them all into slightly earlier graves. 

Plus, the Carrows wouldn't have found out about us. Not definitively. They wouldn't have proof. All it would take would be for another person to use legilimency on Amycus for someone else to see he wasn't lying. They'd watch some of my most sacred memories, things that I had cherished so close to my heart and might not fully recover. And Draco would be incriminated.

Life would be a lot better if I had known how to resist. More secure.

So I had to ask him. I couldn't look any of them in the eye when we were doing something very much not-allowed, something that would have sentenced them to my fate if they were caught and I hadn't attempted to protect them.