Make Me.

Book 3 - Chapter 13

"No, no, no, no, no, no -"

Ellie's head was rocking back and forth on the stone floor. The skin of her face was gray with fatigue and there were damp, puffy red streaks down her cheeks that dripped all the way to her neck.

"It's for your sake, Miss Dracula."

"No. I'm fine. I can do it." Ellie threw her head to the side so nobody that was hunched over her could touch it. With a suck of air into her lungs, the girl lifted a shaking hand to to the place between the crook of her nose and the corner of her eye.

Her fingers tapped against the cold, smooth foreigner that had lodged itself under her skin. With a whimper, Ellie yanked at it, extracting it from her face. Held up to the light, everyone in the room could see a shard of stained glass, sharp and jagged. Ellie lazily threw it to the floor.

"We need to make sure you're -"

"I'm fine," Ellie grunted as Professor McGonagall pulled the girl into a sitting position. She furrowed her brows at the older witch, hearing what was going to come out of her mouth next before she even said it. "No. That place is like my own personal Azkaban."

Professor McGonagall let a gust of air leave her lungs.

"Your father is going to kill me," she said, eyes still scanning Ellie up and down, looking for injuries.

Thankfully for Ellie's sake, all of her pain, besides the prickling feeling coming from cut on her face, seemed to be internal.

~~~

"Dracula, you look -" Malfoy hesitated, letting his voice soften as Ellie hobbled closer to her group of friends. "Your face is bleeding."

"Yeah." Ellie let her stiff body fall into an empty leather armchair. "If I'm lucky that's the only thing that is." She was leaning on her side, body stretched out long like her limbs were refusing to move. She looked like a stick bug.

"You're not very lucky," said Blaise.

"Isn't that the truth Zabini. I think even the bones in my ears are broken." Ellie didn't know why she was smiling. It felt like she had been hit by every bus in London at at once.

"At least you're not in the Hospital Wing?" asked Daphne, trying to sound optimistic while her friend was actively crumbling into the chair.

"They tried. They tried dragging me - literally."

"They?" questioned Pansy.

"McGonagall was there," was all Ellie could breathe out before a sharp, shooting pain burst up through her diaphragm.

Everyone was looking at Ellie with expectancy. They were waiting for her to tell them what she did that night. Really, they were waiting for her to tell them what put her in such a state, so they could avoid it for the rest of their lives themselves.

"You're all going to laugh at me," she said finally, quietly.

"We're not going to laugh at you. Well, Malfoy might, but - we can beat him up for you," said Theodore.

Ellie shook her head no.

"At least wait until I figure out how to do it properly. Then I'll tell you. It'd just be embarrassing if you watched me turn up like this week after week knowing I was failing the whole time," she said with a fake chuckle.

She was trying to hide the ever growing discomfit in her chest. It was a different discomfort than the one she was acutely aware of, she was sure of that, one-hundred percent sure. It wasn't physical. She could feel another piece of her old life breaking away from her, falling to the floor and getting stepped on by passerbys. Turning invisible is one thing, but what she did tonight, was a whole different level of weird vampire magic. Ellie wasn't ready to be okay with it yet, and if she wasn't okay with it, why would her friends be?