THE FURIES ▸ Draco Malfoy

Chapter Seventeen: PENTHOS

◤ ❝This war has taken the brightest of us and left us only shadows...I cannot say with absolute certainty that any of us would not have done the very same as you. Survival, in war, is not the goal. We only look for a way to end the suffering, by any means possible. For some, surviving is the only possibility. For others, the suffering never stops until life itself does.❞ ― Kal Radnor ◢

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:    PENTHOS

December 21, 1996

            "You can always come with me."

Andromeda stared expectantly at Draco, a small bag laying on her shoulder. The Room of Requirement looked different that early morning, the two of them up earlier than any other students to go test another theory on the Cabinet. Draco, as she discovered soon after the argument with Snape, had made progress. One of the spells from Epps' book that she highlighted worked to bring the green apple he had been tossing earlier back to him. Where most of their attempts ended up with nothing returning, that one had. Albeit, there was a chunk missing from the apple, but that was progress. Because of it, Mia spent the rest of the night and the early part of the morning in the Room with Draco. 

Running on a lack of sleep, and only having just changed from the red dress robes and into regular clothing, she was dead on her feet. After the night and the events of the new day, she was ready to drop any second. Her and Theodore would be leaving in an hour to go back to the Erebus manor, a place that Mia hadn't seen since June. The longer she thought about going, the more convinced she was to stay back at Hogwarts with Draco. It seemed like a safer option, even with all of the tension recently. He decided last minute that he would not be going home to see Narcissa, already having sent a brief letter apologizing before he went back to working on the Cabinet. 

"I need to see if any of these spells will work," Draco dismissed, barely glancing up from his place on the ground. He had been sitting in front of the Cabinet for the last hour, deflecting any attempt she gave in trying to speak to him. "If I can figure out the reason why the spell has only repaired a section of the Cabinet, I can repair the rest of it with something else in this blasted book. We've finally reached the halfway point in it." 

Mia frowned, looking down at him. "Draco..." 

"I'm fine, Mia. Go home." 

She paused, biting down on her lip in thought as she considered leaving the boy alone. Neither one of them had been in a particular conversational mood after the night they had, but something nagged in the back of her mind. Whether it was what Snape said to her or her own thoughts, they prevented her from moving. Maybe it was because he didn't use his acclaimed nickname for her, the first hint of his upset. Mia did the opposite of what Draco told her, and she gently laid the bag at her feet. Moving over to the empty spot at his side on the rug, she sat down criss-crossed next to him. 

He didn't look over at her, but the deep sigh that escaped him was enough of a reaction. "What are you doing? You need to be leaving. You know Theodore will be mad if you're late." 

"We need to talk," she said, simply. Her eyes stayed on his exhausted face, waiting for him to turn. 

"Could have fooled me, the way you've been acting recently." 

"Draco."

Her words were not as gentle anymore, hardening with a plead. Mia watched as his face twitched, lip pulling down into a small frown. She waited, wishing he would just talk to her already. Finally, after a few grueling moments, he turned his head so that he was facing her completely. The sight of him made her heart drop, beginning to see just how similarly the two of them were starting to look like each other. The dark circles under her eyes were replicated underneath his own, and the translucence she swore she saw before coated the paleness of his skin. What she focused on were his grey eyes, worn down and taken from so much that they lost their warmth entirely. They were just exhausted now.