BETWEEN REVENGE AND LOVE

52

25/11/1995

It is always the same. Day after day.

This morning has been the usual foggy swirl of happenings passing me by. Just like innumerable mornings before.

First, the alarm clock I hardly hear most of the time. Getting up, numb body, numb brain.

Breakfast, colourful with all the people around, but I only seem to get glimpses of the life around me out of my eye corners. I keep to myself and chew on food I do not taste.

Classes are a lot greyer than breakfast. But the only times my brain opens for information and content. After I withdraw into the library to study, my nose in a book at all times so no one could get the idea of starting a conversation.

Dinner's exactly like breakfast. Dull, tasteless, taking place without my involvement.

And sleep, sleep is something else. Restless, uncomfortable. Nights filled with tears, with sobbing. My aching heart's pain won't give me peace. So I'll cry to exhaustion and beyond that, night after night after night after night.

Last night was rare. Calm, recuperating. I thought of Theo as I brushed my teeth in the bathroom and of Draco on the way to the great hall. Thought of them incessantly. Once I reached my table, they did turn down quite a bit, my thoughts. But I wasn't particularly upset about that. It hurt to think of them. It hurt immensely.

Now I'm sitting here, forcing food down my throat I have no desire for. Next to me are my friends or what they would consider me by now. Are we still friends? I've not given them a thought in so long. Mostly out of fear.

Nauseous already, I empty my cup of, well, of what, actually? Presumably pumpkin juice. What does it matter? I need to leave, hurry to get to my classes.

"When are you going to buy your dress, Daphne?"

Startled I stay in my seat I was just ready to jump out off and turn my head perplexed, into the direction the voice came from. Tracey's voice. What dress? I stare at Tracey's blurry figure until it sharpens.

"Oh, I'm not gonna be needing one," Daphne answers unmoved by Tracey's excitement. She in fact looks more interested in stabbing her scrambled eggs with a fork than the dress she's supposed to buy apparently. Again, what dress?

"Y/n?"

Caught off guard, I close my eyes and curse myself and the curiosity that made me listen in. Why at all? For no reason. Just because my consciousness allowed me to surface. To escape the prison I'm living in for a moment.

"Yes?" I respond, my quiet voice brittle. I can't remember when I last talked. Could have been two days ago or two weeks. I have absolutely no memory of it.

"Are you better today?" Daphne asks, her forehead furrowed with worry. After that silence reigns which I realise I'll have to fill with answers. How am I, what's going on with me? Am I better today?

Overwhelmed and irritated by my rediscovered consciousness, all the sounds and colours that penetrate my ears and eyes, I try to think. Am I better today?

I think yes. I maybe am better today. I am better today, I actually am.

"Yes," I answer again, with that same brittle voice. In disbelief myself, I clear my throat.