The Tragic Tale of the Boy Who Lived and the Boy Who Wanted to Die [ON HIATUS]

Draco couldn’t believe how stupid he was. He had known, deep down, that his father had only come to see him for personal gain, but that hadn’t stopped him from hoping. It was pointless, in Draco’s opinion, to put on a show about the minor injury, but he had to. His father had made it very clear that it was important.

He had explained, briefly, how they were going to use his injury to get Hagrid in trouble. This had happened once before, when he was 8. He had been shopping in Diagon Alley, and had convinced his father to let him look at the animals in the Magical Menagerie, when one of the cats had jumped onto his head. It had left a scratch, but Draco had been more scared than actually hurt. His father had made a huge deal, threatening to get their whole shop closed down, until his mother had convinced him to just leave it. Draco hadn’t asked for an animal since.

After his father had left, Draco started complaining about how badly his arm had hurt. He knew Madam Pomfrey could probably see right through him, but she kept him there all the same. Theo was very busy with his schedule, but Blaise had visited frequently, and wasn’t very happy to hear what Draco was tasked with doing.

“He’s making you pretend your arm is hopelessly broken, just to get Hagrid fired?” He exclaimed in the hospital wing when Draco told him. “I thought he was just coming to check on you? Is this normal?”

“I thought so too.” Draco ignored the last question. The less Blaise knew the better.

He hadn’t really been in a social mood lately, so he put all his energy into reading ahead on his classwork. He learned some interesting things, and it took his mind off of his arm, which still hurt, although not anywhere near as badly as it did when he got attacked, and definitely not bad enough to require this prolonged medical attention.

He felt stupid, why had he felt the need to provoke it in the first place? The answer to that was easy; because Potter was looking and Draco didn’t want to seem like a fool. The real question was why he cared so much about what Potter thought of him.

Finally, on Thursday, Madam Pomfrey had enough of him, and she bandaged his arm up and sent him off to class. He checked his schedule, and headed down to the dungeon. He wasn’t very happy about this, he would have preferred to not have to face Potter ever again, but he went down anyway. As soon as he walked in the door, Pansy and Daphne seemed relieved.

“How is it, Draco? Does it hurt much?” Pansy seemed genuinely worried, as did Daphne, although the latter did not speak.

“Yeah,” said Draco, but he looked towards Blaise as he said it. “Did you tell them?’ He whispered to Blaise when he sat down next to him.

“No, I didn’t know if you wanted them to know or not.” Blaise whispered back.

“Settle down, settle down.” said Professor Snape. It turns out they were making a new potion that day, the Shrinking Solution. Draco looked for a place with space for both him and Blaise to set up their cauldrons, but the only place with enough room was at the same table as Potter and Weasley. He really did not want anything to do with Potter right now, but he resigned himself and sat down anyways. Blaise set up his own cauldron next to him, and they began working.

“I hate these stupid bandages. Can you help me skin this shrivelfig?” Draco whispered irritably to Blaise. Draco had always preferred working alone, especially while making potions. He really wished he didn’t have to wear the stupid arm sling. It was so over the top, it was almost funny.

“Yeah, sure. Aren’t you left-handed, though?” Did Blaise seriously think he could skin so much as a potato with only one hand?”

“I’m ambidextrous, actually.” Draco whispered back. Unfortunately, Professor Snape heard their whispers, and walked over to their table.

“Potter, Weasley, are you blind? Can you not clearly see that your table partners are struggling with their potions? Or did you think that it would make you look better if they were unsuccessful at their Shrinking Solution? 10 points from Gryffindor.” Under any normal circumstance, Draco would have thought this funny, and made a joke about it, but currently, he wished he was back down in the Slytherin common room, finishing reading about vampires from his Defence Against the Dark Arts book.

He went to reach for a knife to cut his daisy roots, but he found that it was much harder to cut them without being able to hold them in place. Blaise had tried to help him, but Draco had a very strategic way he cut things, and skinned them, and added them to the cauldron.

“No, he said only a dash of leech juice! Here, I’ll do it.” Draco snapped at Blaise.

“Well sorry, I have my own potion to work on too!” Blaise was already behind, because of trying to help Draco.

“Sorry, but it’s a little hard to properly make a potion with a stupid, bandaged arm.” He kept his voice down, to prevent anybody (especially Potter) from hearing him.

“You know full well your arm is functioning.” Blaise muttered.

“You know full well that there’s nothing either one of us can do about it.” He tried to make his point clear without mentioning any explicit details, because Draco felt like Potter was listening in on them. He was taking far longer than needed slicing his caterpillars, and it looked as if he was straining to hear their every word.

“If you just told him you weren’t going through with it, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” Draco, all secrecy forgotten, said,

“If I ‘just told him I wasn’t going through with it’, things would be a lot worse than they are now.”

Draco started stirring his potion, which was more of a lime green, as opposed to the acid green the textbook described. He noticed Potter staring at him again.

“What do you want?” Draco asked him angrily. Potter looked away and did not answer, however, so Draco returned to his potion, which was almost the colour he needed it to be. Almost. But not quite.

Draco finished that lesson quite unhappy with his potion. It was better than everybody else’s potions, but it just wasn’t good enough. He spent that evening studying. He had no idea what he had missed, but he wasn’t going to let it hinder his performance in class. He studied Charms, Transfiguration, he even started going through his History of Magic book before he realised the time. It was nearly midnight. He decided he would continue his studies over the weekend and went to bed.