BONE DEEP

Every day, a little bit

Fifth year was a whirlwind.

The war that had been lingering on the edge of her life since she was eleven had now spread to every corner, working its way to the middle like ink spilt on parchment. She hated it, every second of it. She hated how the light in Harry's eyes dimmed with each passing day, or how her feelings for Ronald became more confusing and impossible to navigate. She hated that her education was being robbed from her, that they had to teach themselves. She hated how sealed their fates seemed to become after that night at the ministry.

The only thing that she was sure of, that she knew, was that Draco Malfoy was her adversary. The totalitarian takeover of their school- a place that had once provided her with solace and refuge- had only worked to serve his growing feelings of superiority. She saw through it all, just like she had back in their second year. She saw the boy beneath it, crying out for the approval of his Death Eater father, and the feeling she had once named pity turned into something sour. Disappointment.

Sixth year brought about more questions than answers, in all aspects of her life.

The Horcruxes, the oncoming war, the death of their headmaster and all the answers he'd taken to his grave, the potions book, R.A.B. That was all without taking into consideration the things she'd been expecting to focus on; catching up with the education they were denied the year previous, her N.E.W.T exams, her swiftly developing and painfully unrequited feelings for one of her best friends.

What she'd not been expecting, what had shaken the very foundations of everything she thought she knew, was just how fervently her attention would be captured by Draco Malfoy that year. It began in Diagon Alley when he'd stopped her to mock the black eye she was sporting after putting Fred and George's boxing telescope too close to her face. He'd asked how it happened, declaring that he wished to send flowers to whoever was behind it, but that's not what stood out to her. What stood out to her was that he'd noticed at all. What stood out to her was that if one were to look beyond his snarl, to look a little deeper, they may have noticed the same thing she did; that his question was laced with stifled concern.

She hadn't known him capable of such a feeling.

And so, she watched him. She watched him skip meals and stare into nothing while his loyal band of followers spoke through him. She watched his eyes grow duller, his cheeks grow hollower, his uniform fall a little looser over his frame. She watched him pace the hallways and mutter to himself. She watched him break a sweat in potions class yet never raise a hand. She watched him become someone she didn't know, not at all. His once transparent persona had been buried under someone new, someone angry, someone desperate.

There was no seventh year, there was only war.

War was misery; death followed them, flying overhead like a hawk hunting mice. It changed them all in ways that would never, could never, be undone. It had broken them apart and glued them back together repeatedly until she couldn't remember what she'd looked like before. She couldn't remember what it was to sleep and feel rested. She couldn't remember what it was to love without fear, to live without grief.

She did not think of Draco Malfoy very often, not until she had to. Not until she was lying prone on the floor of his family drawing room, weeping under the wand of his aunt. Over the chorus of curses and distant bellowing from her friend, her lover, she'd caught the eye of the enemy and silently begged him not to say anything. There had been a moment, merely a flicker in time that had stretched to minutes in her mind, where his eyes had filled with sickness and fury. But it was gone as quickly as it came, replaced with a slate of cool indifference, and he'd turned his head from her writhing form.