𝐁𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭 | Dramione

Chapter 8

November 3 1999

Onism: (noun)

the awareness of how little of the world you'll ever experience;
the frustration of being stuck in just one body,
that inhabits only one place at a time.

~

That was the last of their conversation before the class was dismissed and Draco swiftly picked up his things and left in a hurry.

Harry and Ginny pulled her back as Hermione was leaving after school.

"Do you want to go to Hogsmead for the night? We're grabbing a couple of Butterbeers," asked Ginny.

Hermione remembered the last time alcohol was involved. No. She didn't have time to party or drink. She had to study, she had to find a cure.

"Um—I wish, but I can't. I'm sorry," she hesistated.

"Oh come on Hermione, it's Friday night!" Harry spoke.

"No I really can't tonight, I have to study. It's important."

"Alright. You'll come next week though?"

"Yes. Counting on it," she responded with an absent smile.

They left in a hurry.

She wasn't planning on going next week or the week after. Time was not on her side.

Hermione spent her days practicing different healing charms, brewing potions, researching, but her efforts amounted to nothing. After a diagnostic spell, it revealed she had chronic wounds. She dove into another textbook.

"The wound is stuck in a stage of healing, unable to finish completion because of complications such as inflammation or infection." In her case, it was poison. The blood would dry after a healing spell then reopen the next day to spread the dark magic further.

Her skin had become permanently tinted with a purple-blue colour from the constant ice baths.

She read dozens of books but the extent of her scars were never mentioned although she was probably the first to have been tortured and poisoned by a death eater to actually survive.

Regardless, mind or body, dark magic extracts a price and she knew eventually, she'd have to pay it all.

                 ~*~

Hermione wondered what Malfoy meant when he said he would handle it. For a full two weeks and three days, Draco was missing from school and she wondered whether or not he was ever coming back.

Until he did. She saw him in the morning, casually walking into the dining hall as if he hadn't disappeared at all.

Draco walked to the table, sitting beside Blaise and Theo. She noticed the change in his appearance— his shoulders slumped downwards, his eyes were still cold and grey, but lost in another dimension. He looked defeated.

She watched him intently as his group talked with each other conspicuously. Her gaze was interrupted when his face shot up to look at her. She instinctively glanced away.

The rest of the day was filled with fleeting glances and stolen gazes. They would continue to lock eyes but never more. Hermione couldn't understand the anger plastered on his face whenever they made eye contact.

After lunch, Luna and Hermione walked together.

"You can't understand, I know. But it's like he's a completely different person around me. I bring out another side of him— the best side," Luna spoke with excitement.