If I Lose Myself

Chapter Six: Draco

"Thick heads," Draco muttered under his breath as he beckoned them to follow him down towards the end of the corridor near a set of stairs leading upwards.

As soon as he was face to face with the brick wall, he turned towards the two with a blight sneer. "You know the drill. Keep an eye out for anyone coming about, hex them for all I care and if there's any danger – use the coins I gave you. Don't follow me inside if you still want to see the light of tomorrow, you hear?"

As usual, the two exchanged confused looks the way they have been for the past two months now in taking guard. Perhaps they've grown out of the habit of questioning him because they both nodded their approval and turned their backs on him, taking out their wands as they did so.

Draco wordlessly turned his back on them and began to concentrate on what he wanted. I need the room where the Vanishing Cabinet resides. I need to mend it. I need no one else to get in there right now except for me. He repeated this mantra three times as he had done for so long, and with a slight woosh of a sound; two rusted double doors appeared before him. With a wave of his wand, one of the doors opened and he slipped through it.

Shutting the door behind him, he examined his surroundings. It looked exactly like an attic full of random things – bookshelves, cupboards, boxes, dusty sofas and materials of all kinds. He navigated through them with ease before arriving in the middle of the room where a tall cabinet stood covered by a red duvet. With a swish of his wand, the duvet slipped off the cabinet and landed on the floor with a soft thud.

He opened the door of the rickety cabinet, seeing nothing but an endlessly dark void in it. One of his hands reached for his pockets, took out a galleon and placed it inside. He shut the door with his free hand and pointed his wand before the cabinet as he started to chant the needed charm.

"Harmonia Nectere Passus." He chanted eerily as he closed his eyes. The sound of the cabinet trembling resounded throughout the quiet room. During the first two months, he had considered this a sign of progress – but by the time that that was all it had done since then; he hardly believed it was doing any good.

"Harmonia Nectere Passus." He said a little louder now, pinching his eyes harder this time. A part of his mind traveled into a space of just him and the cabinet and his intentions to mend it. He focused on fixing it like he would fix a broken wooden box or healing it like he would a harmless creature. The trembling stopped.

Draco opened his eyes before swinging the cabinet's door open, disappointed and fretted to find that the galleon was still there. The Vanishing Cabinet was supposed to transport the galleon into cabinet's twin in Borgin and Burke's or at least stay in limbo. Frustrated, he slammed the door's cabinet once more and concentrated further.

"Harmonia Nectere Passus."

He continued focusing on parallels of fixing the cabinet. But for some reason, his mind drifted elsewhere – out of the space and purpose of his coming here. Suddenly, an image of Astoria Greengrass in her jammies came to view. It was the day that he had gone up to the Astronomy Tower with her after not being able to see her for over a week then. As much as he hated to admit it to himself, she looked beautiful. Disheveled with her hair all over the place and her green eyes so tired they threatened to close; she was practically a walking siren. He remembered feeling her hand on his arm, and not just any arm, but the arm where the dark mark was imprinted. He felt a sense of calmness, almost at peace for the first time in months, at her touch.

Then the scene shifted to the moments when they started doing hands-on potion making. It was one of those tutoring sessions for the past few weeks. He would, of course unintentionally, mistake one ingredient from another causing several potion blowups that ultimately ended up in laughter. Astoria's laugh was like hearing a symphony, a nearly perfect crescendo. Her face was covered in soot and her hair had essence of revolting goo, but she didn't seem to care about it.