[1] Gasoline ✗ Draco Malfoy

twenty three

Chapter Twenty-Three

Seohyun now knew what it must have been like for Draco last year, forced to act under the orders of You-Know-Who, with the price of freedom on his head.

She was definitely feeling it now.

Just a month into the school term, Seohyun felt the strain behind to pile on top of her. It was like she was Atlas and was holding up the weight of the sky: the weight immeasurable and straining on her shoulders, difficult to keep up, threatening to crush her at any moment.

One slip up, and she was finished. By either side.

Ginny, Neville, and Luna wasted no time establishing Dumbledore's Army. People were quick to sign up: apparently, the organisation had been running the year before Seohyun arrived at Hogwarts. After only a few meetings, plans had been made, and the DA was prepared to give the Carrows hell.

They deserved it, Seohyun thought, though that was a thought she definitely kept to herself. The Carrows were awful, worse than Snape. They relished in punishment, in bringing suffering, in favouring the Slytherins, in leaching the joy out of everything that was once good about the school. It felt like all a Gryffindor had to do was to breathe wrong, and the Carrows were on to them with punishments that made Snape's detentions feel like a tea break.

And Seohyun had to deal with them personally.

She came to dread the end of Muggle Studies and Dark Arts, for every now and again the Carrows would crook a finger at her and say, "We need to talk."

She'd comply, and be forced to divulge whatever she knew about the movements of the DA.

Of course, she never gave her friends away. But she couldn't be too inaccurate, otherwise the Carrows would become suspicious of her – something that would not end well.

There were numerous close calls and encounters for her friends with the Carrows, but they weren't caught and managed to get their job finished before either one of the Carrows could arrive at the scene. This just let the Carrows to become increasingly more frustrated over time, which was, to be honest, a little amusing.

Though they tended to take it out on her, which only brought her own.

Not much distracted her.

She couldn't talk with her friends without feeling sick in her stomach, something twisting like a nest of snakes within. Seohyun felt like she was betraying them just by being in the same room as them: even though she knew it was impossible unless they owned a Invisibility Cloak, she knew the Carrows couldn't keep track of everything she did, it felt as though they were lurking nearby constantly, overhearing everything she had to say.

She didn't sleep well, her thoughts keeping her awake, and whenever she did sleep, it was fitfully. Her dreams were awful: of her friends discovering what had happened to her, of her true allegiances being discovered, of her friends dying in a war or watching Draco being ripped away from her, of her parents dying. She slept lightly and woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat.

Hogwarts was a prison, even more so than Malfoy Manor. She wasn't just trapped by one group, but two. A tiny mistake on either side would result in her isolation.

She couldn't confide in anyone: she wasn't even able to confide in Draco in public, after everything that happened following Dumbledore's death. People hated him, and to be seen with him – it would only place suspicion on her.

The secluded hours she had with Draco were only late at night, in areas hidden from public view. Those few hours were the only hours she could let all her fears and worries go, and confide in someone. She could cry to relieve her stress, or rant, or reminisce life in Korea. She could actually be herself. All masks were lowered.