CURSED [D.M]

-(36) zilliah zilliah zilliah

tw// panic attack

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DRACO gets out of bed, dread deep seated in the pit of his stomach. It's the end of January in two days. The end of the deadline for his task.

A week ago, he had finally found out the issue with the Vanishing Cabinet and solved it. It was a simple spell that was much hard to come by, but after a trip into the restricted section of the library, he felt foolish to have not looked in there sooner. Harmonia Nectere Passus- there it was but just finding it wasn't enough. It was a tricky charm and it had took him two more days to execute it with precision.

The fixing of the cabinet had got half his job done. Which was a good thing and a bad thing. Because then, he had to focus on his other task. It had inevitably dawned upon him again. He had no way around it.

He had got the idea of poisoning Dumbledore after visiting the Weasley twins' joke shop with Zilliah all those days back. He wasn't foolish to use the exact same failed potion. It would've directly led to him without a doubt. But he had slipped a vile of it into his pocket when he was sure no one was looking. He had also taken a vile of the perfected potion too.

Then two days ago, he had secretly purchased a lethal poison and bewitched Madam Rosmerta, the lady of the Three Broomsticks pub, to slip it into the elfic wine set for Professor Slughorn to gift Dumbledore.

And it couldn't have gone any worse.

Turns out, Slughorn never ended up giving the wine to Dumbledore. Instead, he somehow gave a glass of it to Ronald Weasley and he had nearly escaped death just because Potter had the insight to give his best friend a bezoar. He had never liked Weasley but thinking of how he would've died, when he has nothing to do with the whole of Draco's task at hand, had sent him over the edge again. One more innocent life that could've been lost because of his carelessness.

The instant he had overheard the news from some random gryffindors passing by the hallway, his throat had closed up and his occlumency walls had shattered. He had bolted straight back to his room and cried into Zilliah's arms. She didn't ask a single question. She just held onto him, cradling him through the attack, her touch lingering all over his face and back. He doesn't know how but whenever he is in her arms, everything seems a lot more controllable. Almost like she was drawing his panic and fear onto herself to relieve him off the burden.

She had never demanded him for a clear cut answer as to why he is like this these days- why he experiences these constant panic attacks. She seemed content with him coming to her whenever he was in this troubled state. She didn't want to pry. She didn't want him to freak out and shut her out and drown in his anguish alone. She knew he would if she pushes him. So she just settles onto offering him comfort through all of it.

He looks down onto her, currently sleeping peacefully for the first time in almost two weeks. And he understands, despite all, the main reason she doesn't push him is because he never pushes her either. He knows how she can retract back into her shell if she is ever asked of what these nightmares that so cruelly haunt her are all about. He knows there are a thousand secrets that lie beneath her gentle and tired eyes. And as much as he wants to know all about it, he will have to be content with being there for her whenever she wakes from those deadly traps of her mind, shaking and sweating, her eyes mad and distant, like she wasn't even herself.

Two broken humans clinging onto each other to keep themselves from entirely crumbling under the weight of their wretched lives.

Could there be a tragedy more beautiful to ever exist in this world?