𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬

Too Early For This

Paisley

The next night I woke up and it was probably three in the morning. I looked over and heard grunting and Draco was scratching his forearm really hard. He realized I was awake and he quickly pulled his sleeve back down. I grabbed my wand from the bedside table and flicked it to turn on the lights. "Draco?" I asked as I sat up and my eyes adjusted the the light. I could tell he was crying. "Draco what's wrong?"

"Nothing, just go back to sleep." He said quietly.

"Did you have a nightmare?" I asked, ignoring what he said.

"No." He said as he looked down at his arm, which he was now holding down with his other hand.

"Let me see your arm." He shook his head. I thought maybe it just hurt because that was where the dark mark was, but he was being weird. "Let me see it." I reached out but he scooted away. "Please." He shook his head again.

Since he wouldn't let me see and was clearly hiding something, I grabbed his hand and quickly pulled his arm towards me and lifted up his sleeve. "D-Draco what are you doing?" When I looked down, I saw scratch marks all over the mark so deep that blood was seeping out of his skin. "We're you trying to..."

"Just go back to sleep Paisley!" He said loudly as he ripped his arm away from my grasp.

I ignored him again and got up out of bed, went the the lavatory, and grabbed anything I could find. I grabbed a washcloth and wet it with warm water, a dry washcloth, some bandages and gauze, and whatever else. I walked back out with it all in my hands and set it on his bedside table.

He was faced away from me. "Draco just come here." He wouldn't budge. "Stop being so stubborn, I'm trying to help you." And then he slowly turned around to face me and hung his legs down from the bed. I knelt down so that it would be easier as he uncovered his arm again. There was more blood now. As he hung his head down, I held his arm with a gentle hand and started to softly pat down the blood with the wet washcloth. He squinted his eyes, it probably hurt quite a bit.

I think it was this moment when I was bandaging him up that I finally understood the feeling of hurt when you see someone you love hurt themselves. It was a different kind of hurt. I wondered if this was how he felt all those times when he saw that I was hurting myself.

As I was finishing up the bandages, I realized that it almost looked like there were old scratches and new ones. "How long have you been doing this?" I asked.

"Umm, a few weeks or something, I don't know." He said. "The past few times have been when I've stayed up just thinking about how - how things would be so much easier if I weren't a death eater. How easy it would be for us. And for you."

Once I was done, I grabbed everything and just set it all on the counter in the lavatory so I could get back to him faster. When I walked back out, even in the dim light, I could see him trying so hard to hold back more tears as he still sat in the same spot. I quickly kneeled back down and hugged him.

Once he hugged me back, he started crying like I thought he would. He slowly hugged me tighter as I was between his legs and I softly scratched the back of his neck and head with my hand to try and comfort him. "Please, please don't do that again. It's not just a tattoo, you can't just try to scratch it off. And...if you cut a vain the wrong way, you could...bleed out." I spoke quietly and calmly. "I don't want you to fall into what I did. I know it might be different than me, but trying to scratch it off isn't going to solve anything, it's going to create more problems."

He nodded and I hugged him for a little while longer. Even in the midst of war, it was only the two of us in this small dormitory. And even though their world was fighting, my broken world was in my arms right here.