LIAR, Draco Malfoy.

four

     FLORA HAD TAKEN TO LOCKING HERSELF in Pansy and her's dorm for the rest of the night.

The feeling of hunger that once consumed her dissipated with every passing minute. Music lulled in the background for hours while she lazily folded pants and shirts and tucked them into her side of the dresser. Flora could've done that with a simple flick of her wand, but she found the distraction rather comforting — her mind focused on the geometric fold of her sleeves rather than what happened in the great hall.

And when she did catch a glimpse of that memory in her mind, despite her great attempts to keep it tucked into the pages of a journal, a shudder rolled down her back in embarrassment. Utter humiliation filled her body to the brim, her skin tingled with regret, and she wished she could wash off the feeling of Draco squirming through her mind.

But she couldn't, so she resorted to distracting herself.

When all clothes were tucked away as neatly as she could get them, Flora unpacked her personal belongings bag and went to decorate her bathroom with lotions and other self-care products. Her eyes found themselves in the mirror's reflection, and Flora could barely recognize herself. From the day she'd been strapped to that chair in the Malfoy's drawing room, she barely had any time to think about herself.

She didn't eat, she didn't clean herself regularly, she rarely slept more than four hours, and her mind never rested. Even in her dreams, she would find herself imagining the worst — Voldemort standing over the dead body's of her father and sister, laughing cynically while Flora cried out for them. Yet, she couldn't find it in herself to talk with them, let them in to the emptiness she called her heart.

Flora purposefully closed herself off from them, even though the fear she felt of losing them was great.

Instead, Flora took to distracting herself with reading books and writing down notes. She was never the intelligent one, that being left to Priya, so finding the rhythm she needed to maintain daily studying was difficult. Once she did, it became second nature, and she could ignore the voices around her and the television from the living room and the incessant crying from Priya. That was the first step to occluding: centering yourself.

She could do it in practice, just not in the real world.

Flora pushed away from the ceramic counter and left their little bathroom, a hand going to run over the crevices of her face before pressing a thumb and index finger to the bridge of her nose. A headache was already forming, and she spent less than a minute thinking about her summer.

Flora padded over to her bed and dug through her bag, a grimace coming over her face when she eventually pulled out her occlumency book. She'd read it at least three times, front to back, every letter that inked the pages, and she had gotten everything she could out of it. Yet she came back to it, desperate to figure something out to help herself. Other books managed to repeat the same information as this one. She felt stuck.

Her eyes skidded over the cover of Occluding: The Basic, the Intermediate, and the Advanced as she moved to the chair in front of the window, a comforting cushion calling her name as she hadn't relaxed for over two hours. Her brain was always in overdrive, and at some point, she would burn out — Flora understood this. She couldn't stop, now, not when it gave her an outlet from the craziness of Voldemort.

Flora settled into the seat and cracked open the book once more, eyes beginning to skim the familiar introduction. A sigh escaped her.

—

Time ticked by, hours passed, and Flora never seemed to notice the moonlight glittering through the Black Lake's water and into her dorm.