Green Eyed Monster | Draco Malfoy

77. Picking Sides

Enjoy the end of The Half Blood Prince :)

Chapter 77 - Picking Sides

Invisibility had never really seemed important to me as it always had to Harry. When he had been sneaking, I had been distracting; when he would hide, I would be lying; when he had been spying, I'd usually been the one he had spied on...but I understood the compulsion now. Now that I needed my time to think and to figure out everything that had happened, invisibility was all that I craved...but the luxury would have been as much an illusion as the calmness that had settled over the castle after the battle.

Madame Pomfrey had been one of the few to see me, thanks to my injuries. The concussion was too great to ignore and as tempting as the idea of never having to wake up to this mess seemed, I was not ready to die in my sleep - she tended to that first. She made sure that very few knew that it was me behind the curtains of the last bed on the right. I was laid beside Bill, whose face had been mauled by Greyback during the fight; we were assured he would stay human, even if he was scarred, more gruff, and now had an affinity for very rare meats. I hadn't stayed or gotten to speak with him for very long, but the way he was asking for each meal to be served raw was enough to know the damage.

Ron had found me that day, thanks to visiting Bill when Mr and Mrs Weasley were in the hospital wing tending to him. Ron had been more than pleased to inform me that not only were the Slytherins in twists, but my brother wanted to talk - I had gotten myself discharged before he was out of the room to tell Harry where to find me.

I spent half the day in the Room of Requirement after that - not that it had been easy to go back and face that place. I had initially convinced myself that I was going to grab the potions I'd left to brew there - things like nearly completed Liquid Luck and Polyjuice potion were not something I was willing to give up on...but I was lying to myself. I was really there for that moment; the odd breath when I could forget that Draco wasn't here with me, that he wasn't waiting behind one of the shelves like he always had been. This was where I had seemed to spend all year with him...it seemed comforting to be there for the few seconds I could pretend he was with me. But he wasn't; and it was incredible how easily erased he had been from the room, as he had been from my life.

From there it hadn't been that difficult getting down to the common room unnoticed; those who dared to be in the halls were walking in groups that were noisy and easy to avoid, but most stayed in the common rooms besides meal times. It was during meal times that I heard parents tended to make grand entrances to steal their children away from their friends and comforts. I didn't feel the need to join the hordes, I didn't feel like I deserved to join them. There was a part of me that I couldn't deny felt like it had never been a part of this place - not really. I didn't feel like I had ever been like everyone else here. I had been a spectator, not a partaker. I had been someone who watched in classes but could never perform, someone who watched the world fall apart but never stopped to hold it together. I was reaping what I had sown with no one to teach me how to mend it. My mentor, the monster that I refused to accept, had finally taught me my most valuable lesson - nothing was permanent.

The first day that I was in bed no one dared to open the curtains.

The second day Daphne and Lillian had started trying to coax me out, though they ended up giving in and leaving me food with a few words to convince me to keep myself healthy.

The third day they tried to sic Tracey on me, though even she didn't have the nerve to try and open the curtains and face my wrath.

It was the fourth day that they had finally found my kryptonite. Though Tracey had tried using intimidation while Lillian and Daphne had tried to use comfort, it was guilt that worked the best - a blind man could have seen that it was what I needed to pull myself out of my own head. So they fetched it for me, the guilt rearing its head with the rude rip from my curtains as they were torn from my bed.