Fic: Manorexic, Harry/Draco, NC-17
Title: Manorexic
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,145
Summary: The Malfoys have always been very clear as to what they hold in high regard, such as wealth and blood purity, but as Pansy and Blaise found out in July of last year, there are some things that Lucius and Narcissa drilled into Draco's head from the time he was a little boy that left deeper impressions than even a Dark Mark.
Warnings: Eating Disorder
Author's Note: There are only a couple chapters left! I'm trying to do this more quickly than I have the past few months. :)
ADDITIONAL NOTE: The title of this fiction is an ambiguous word. No offense is meant by its use.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Manorexic
Chapter Twenty-Four
He’d expected Ron and Hermione to take him back. Or, at the very least, allow him to explain himself. Possibly yell at him. Maybe they’d have a fight. But there had been no doubt in his mind that they’d go back to being friends, however shaky it may have been at first.
This wasn’t the case.
When he’d walked into the common room that same night, he’d found Ron and Hermione sitting by the fire. Crookshanks had been sleeping on Hermione’s lap while she read. Ron had been pretending to do homework. It was so nostalgic and familiar that Harry had felt a lump rise in his throat. How had he managed to alienate himself from this?
He’d sat down in a chair near them and both had looked at him with confusion written clearly all over their faces. And he’d launched into an explanation. He’d told them about how Ginny had caught him and Malfoy, and he’d begged for their forgiveness for lying to them. He’d told them about how Anthony had broken up with him, and how, subsequently, he had broken it off with Malfoy, because his insides felt like they were tearing themselves apart with guilt. He was lost, felt broken, and he’d admitted this.
He’d not expected the cold look from Ron, nor his silence. And when Ron had gone back to his homework without a word, it had hurt just as much, if not more, than the two breakups he’d endured earlier that night. But Hermione’s silence - that was earthshattering. Hermione had always been the one to deal with him and help him make it better. To steer him in the right direction, never becoming frustrated when he was stubborn.
But despite the sad look underlying the anger on her face, she, too, had not uttered a word, and gone back to her book. He’d sat there for a moment, shocked into a kind of temporary paralysis, until Hermione had mumbled, “We don’t have anything to say to you, Harry.”
And with that, he’d gotten up from his seat, his body numb, and went to his dorm, where he closed the curtains and curled up under his comforter, clutching at the sheets, trying to pretend that he was dead.
* * *
In the days that followed things only managed to get worse. Ron and Hermione still wouldn’t talk to him, along with the rest of the school, because, as per usual at Hogwarts, gossip spread like wildfire. He received dirty looks from Gryffindors and Ravenclaws alike. Even from Hufflepuffs. The Slytherins didn’t seem to care all that much. Save for Zabini, from whom he’d caught a death glare. And Pansy. That had been indescribably hurtful, and he thought he’d never felt so ashamed.
Harry was completely and utterly alone. Even when he had tried talking to Pansy she’d sneered at him and stalked away. It was like a punch to the gut. Like suddenly he’d developed a highly contagious disease and no one thought he was worth the risk. The fact that only a year previously he’d saved them all from dictatorship under a Dark Lord didn’t seem to matter in light of the circumstances. Their hero was now a cheating, back-stabbing man-slut. And maybe it was worse that it was him. Maybe they’d expected more because of who he was, and his fall from grace was much greater than anyone else’s might have been.
Just as terrible as the alienation was watching Draco steadily shift back to his old habits. Harry hadn’t tried speaking to him - he respected Draco more than that. But it was pure agony to be so utterly aware of his absences at meal time, and, after a week passed, from classes as well. The weight he’d gained was dropping much too quickly. Harry spotted another stain on his shirt, and realized, for the first time, that that day he’d seen the ketchup stain, after they’d been fighting - well, that hadn’t been a ketchup stain. He’d been puking while they hadn’t been talking, and Harry felt like vomiting himself at the thought of what Draco might be getting up to now.
The inner conflict was torture. He wasn’t sure he could live with himself if he continued to sit by and watch Draco destroy his body, but on the other hand, he couldn’t imagine Draco would have anything to do with him at this point. He felt like he had no right to try to make Draco stop, not after what he’d done to him.
But God was this painful.
* * *
“Draco, please,” Pansy sobbed. “Please, you have to get up and go to class. They’ll contact your p . . .” She trailed off, remembering, biting her lip.
Draco laughed harshly; it was a weak, grainy sound. Pansy shivered, right down to her bones.
Draco lay on his bed, under his covers, curled up in a ball. She was glad for the comforter, because she’d seen his body yesterday, and she’d nearly heaved. He was bad. She didn’t know if it was worse than it had been before, or if it only seemed that way because he’d been so happy lately, but . . . It was frightening, to say the very least.
It was worse than last time, though. Because this time it wasn’t just his body: it was Harry, too. It was anxiety and depression and stress all balled up into one and mixed up with his eating disorder. She remembered all too well what Draco had said that night only a week ago; apparently he hadn’t been lying. Here he was, a small, prone form on his bed, and he was dying. Physically and mentally slipping away from her like sand.
Pansy swallowed harshly at the thought.
“My parents?” he spat, and Pansy could hear the sneer in his voice, and the longing, and the sadness, and everything else that was eating him alive. Tears welled up in her eyes and one quickly spilled over. “I wish them well in their efforts.”
Pansy stared at him for another moment before she left the room, head down, tears still trailing down her cheeks. Blaise sat on the couch, waiting for her, and she sat down next to him heavily. He draped an arm over her shoulders.
“Any luck?”
She merely shook her head. Blaise sighed and tightened his grip.
“I don’t know who to be angriest at,” he said softly. “Potter, the Weasel, or Draco.”
Pansy laughed wetly and leaned further into Blaise’s embrace.
“I know it was shitty of them to do to Goldstein, but I still hate Weasley for doing this,” she mumbled. “I . . . I know Harry would have broken up with his stupid Ravenclaw eventually. I’m sure of it. He was so in love with Draco.”
“Potter’s always been stupid,” Blaine grumbled.
“He loves Draco, Blaise,” she said insistently, pulling away from him. Blaise raised a brow. Her breath was coming out in short, sharp bursts. “I know he does. The way he would talk about him sometimes . . . He sounded like a bloody Hufflepuff!”
“Pans,” he said softly, a small, sad smile playing on his face.
“No.” She stood up suddenly, glaring down at Blaise with a fire in her eyes. “Harry was . . . he was in love with him.” She felt tears building in her eyes again. This was all so unfair. If that stupid Weasley girl had just minded her own business Harry would have figured it out. She knew it. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. She’d gotten to know him recently, because of Draco. She’d been forced to give him a chance . . . and he’d initiated it! He could be an oblivious, stubborn idiot sometimes, yes. But now she could finally see what everyone else saw. What Granger and Weasley saw in him; what had given them so much faith in that boy during the war. It was strange, because just as she was beginning to notice it, everyone in the school seemed to have forgotten. But she knew, even if the whole school wanted to pretend it was no longer true. Even if she hated him again.
Harry Potter was a good person. As much as she would have liked to strangle him; as impossible as she knew it would be to talk to him without flinging a hex, she knew it was true. What else would have possessed a person to speak the way he had so often about Draco, especially considering the part he’d played in the war?
“Where are you going?” Blaise asked, standing up, as she moved toward the entrance to the common room, her hands shaking with anger and determination. With the force of her resentment. Because this situation was just so utterly, unbearably unfair.
“Make sure to check on Draco,” she said, and swiftly made her exit.
* * *
Not Sirius, nor Dumbledore, nor Merlin himself could have prepared Harry for the spectacle following dinner.
Draco hadn’t been there (as per usual at mealtimes in the last four days), and Harry’s stomach had been churning uncomfortably as he ate, and was continuing to do so as he exited the Great Hall behind and alongside a great many other students. He couldn’t understand why there was a backup. Sure, there were a lot of students, but the entrance hall was bigger than the Durselys’ whole bloody house. There’d never been a doorjamb before in his six and a half years at the school.
It was as he managed to struggle through a group of unmoving second years that he first heard the shouting. It sent a shiver down his spine, because that was Ginny’s voice.
“. . . doesn’t matter anyway!” she shrieked. Peering above a few heads, Harry could make out Pansy standing a few feet away from Ginny, both girls at the center of a circle of students watching the fight eagerly. “He was cheating on Anthony! Someone had to tell him, because Harry clearly wasn’t!”
“You’re such a selfish bitch!” Pansy shouted. Harry’s eyes went wide with mild terror. He couldn’t be sure whether he was more angry or terrified that Pansy had just called Ginny a selfish bitch. Clearly she was unaware of the fact that Weasley women could be scarier than Voldemort when they wanted to. “Everyone knows you did it because you’re bitter that you can’t have him, Weasley!”
Ginny balked. “How dare you -”
“Harry loved him!” Pansy yelled over her. This effectively shut Ginny up. Harry felt heat crawling over his cheeks and down his neck like flames. He wanted to shrink into the crowd, or sink into the foundations of the castle; anything to stop people from beginning to notice him and stare unabashedly. “If you actually cared about Harry then you would have left well enough alone! You would have seen how happy he was with Draco! Instead of dropping him like an old toy you would have talked to him! “
Ginny scoffed and crossed her arms across his chest. “Since when do you defend him, Parkinson?”
“I’m not defending him,” Pansy hissed. “Everything he did was shitty. He hurt Draco, and I won’t forgive him for it.” It felt as though cold tendrils were creeping into his belly and wrapping around his organs. His heart. His lungs. Squeezing. His chest felt tight, like he couldn’t take in enough air. “But at least I know that they were happy, and if it weren’t for you, he would have done the right thing eventually. I think it says something that you didn’t trust him.”
“Fuck you!” Ginny screamed, and Harry noticed tears trailing down her cheeks. “You’re just as bad, condoning a relationship based on lies! You don’t even know Harry!” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Less than a year ago you were perfectly happy to give him up to You-Know-Who, if I remember correctly -!”
“Shut up!”
"Make me!”
Just as it looked as though Pansy would lunge at Ginny, McGonagall stepped through the crowd and placed herself between the two girls.
“Enough!” she said sharply. “Fifteen points each from Gryffindor and Slytherin for language and sheer lack of self-control.” She glared at them in turn. “Return to your Houses immediately. All of you.”
Harry stood stock still as the sea of students parted around him and drifted off to their respective Houses. Pansy stomped down the stairs without looking back, but he saw Ginny glance over her shoulder as she climbed up the marble staircase. She spotted him and shot him a glare full of loathing.
Only when students had stopped blatantly staring did he pull out his Cloak and drape it over himself, then race up the stairs and down a corridor, running into the first empty classroom he could find and finally, finally breaking down against a wall.
Chapter Twenty-Three | Page of Contents | Chapter Twenty-Five
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,145
Summary: The Malfoys have always been very clear as to what they hold in high regard, such as wealth and blood purity, but as Pansy and Blaise found out in July of last year, there are some things that Lucius and Narcissa drilled into Draco's head from the time he was a little boy that left deeper impressions than even a Dark Mark.
Warnings: Eating Disorder
Author's Note: There are only a couple chapters left! I'm trying to do this more quickly than I have the past few months. :)
ADDITIONAL NOTE: The title of this fiction is an ambiguous word. No offense is meant by its use.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Manorexic
Chapter Twenty-Four
He’d expected Ron and Hermione to take him back. Or, at the very least, allow him to explain himself. Possibly yell at him. Maybe they’d have a fight. But there had been no doubt in his mind that they’d go back to being friends, however shaky it may have been at first.
This wasn’t the case.
When he’d walked into the common room that same night, he’d found Ron and Hermione sitting by the fire. Crookshanks had been sleeping on Hermione’s lap while she read. Ron had been pretending to do homework. It was so nostalgic and familiar that Harry had felt a lump rise in his throat. How had he managed to alienate himself from this?
He’d sat down in a chair near them and both had looked at him with confusion written clearly all over their faces. And he’d launched into an explanation. He’d told them about how Ginny had caught him and Malfoy, and he’d begged for their forgiveness for lying to them. He’d told them about how Anthony had broken up with him, and how, subsequently, he had broken it off with Malfoy, because his insides felt like they were tearing themselves apart with guilt. He was lost, felt broken, and he’d admitted this.
He’d not expected the cold look from Ron, nor his silence. And when Ron had gone back to his homework without a word, it had hurt just as much, if not more, than the two breakups he’d endured earlier that night. But Hermione’s silence - that was earthshattering. Hermione had always been the one to deal with him and help him make it better. To steer him in the right direction, never becoming frustrated when he was stubborn.
But despite the sad look underlying the anger on her face, she, too, had not uttered a word, and gone back to her book. He’d sat there for a moment, shocked into a kind of temporary paralysis, until Hermione had mumbled, “We don’t have anything to say to you, Harry.”
And with that, he’d gotten up from his seat, his body numb, and went to his dorm, where he closed the curtains and curled up under his comforter, clutching at the sheets, trying to pretend that he was dead.
* * *
In the days that followed things only managed to get worse. Ron and Hermione still wouldn’t talk to him, along with the rest of the school, because, as per usual at Hogwarts, gossip spread like wildfire. He received dirty looks from Gryffindors and Ravenclaws alike. Even from Hufflepuffs. The Slytherins didn’t seem to care all that much. Save for Zabini, from whom he’d caught a death glare. And Pansy. That had been indescribably hurtful, and he thought he’d never felt so ashamed.
Harry was completely and utterly alone. Even when he had tried talking to Pansy she’d sneered at him and stalked away. It was like a punch to the gut. Like suddenly he’d developed a highly contagious disease and no one thought he was worth the risk. The fact that only a year previously he’d saved them all from dictatorship under a Dark Lord didn’t seem to matter in light of the circumstances. Their hero was now a cheating, back-stabbing man-slut. And maybe it was worse that it was him. Maybe they’d expected more because of who he was, and his fall from grace was much greater than anyone else’s might have been.
Just as terrible as the alienation was watching Draco steadily shift back to his old habits. Harry hadn’t tried speaking to him - he respected Draco more than that. But it was pure agony to be so utterly aware of his absences at meal time, and, after a week passed, from classes as well. The weight he’d gained was dropping much too quickly. Harry spotted another stain on his shirt, and realized, for the first time, that that day he’d seen the ketchup stain, after they’d been fighting - well, that hadn’t been a ketchup stain. He’d been puking while they hadn’t been talking, and Harry felt like vomiting himself at the thought of what Draco might be getting up to now.
The inner conflict was torture. He wasn’t sure he could live with himself if he continued to sit by and watch Draco destroy his body, but on the other hand, he couldn’t imagine Draco would have anything to do with him at this point. He felt like he had no right to try to make Draco stop, not after what he’d done to him.
But God was this painful.
* * *
“Draco, please,” Pansy sobbed. “Please, you have to get up and go to class. They’ll contact your p . . .” She trailed off, remembering, biting her lip.
Draco laughed harshly; it was a weak, grainy sound. Pansy shivered, right down to her bones.
Draco lay on his bed, under his covers, curled up in a ball. She was glad for the comforter, because she’d seen his body yesterday, and she’d nearly heaved. He was bad. She didn’t know if it was worse than it had been before, or if it only seemed that way because he’d been so happy lately, but . . . It was frightening, to say the very least.
It was worse than last time, though. Because this time it wasn’t just his body: it was Harry, too. It was anxiety and depression and stress all balled up into one and mixed up with his eating disorder. She remembered all too well what Draco had said that night only a week ago; apparently he hadn’t been lying. Here he was, a small, prone form on his bed, and he was dying. Physically and mentally slipping away from her like sand.
Pansy swallowed harshly at the thought.
“My parents?” he spat, and Pansy could hear the sneer in his voice, and the longing, and the sadness, and everything else that was eating him alive. Tears welled up in her eyes and one quickly spilled over. “I wish them well in their efforts.”
Pansy stared at him for another moment before she left the room, head down, tears still trailing down her cheeks. Blaise sat on the couch, waiting for her, and she sat down next to him heavily. He draped an arm over her shoulders.
“Any luck?”
She merely shook her head. Blaise sighed and tightened his grip.
“I don’t know who to be angriest at,” he said softly. “Potter, the Weasel, or Draco.”
Pansy laughed wetly and leaned further into Blaise’s embrace.
“I know it was shitty of them to do to Goldstein, but I still hate Weasley for doing this,” she mumbled. “I . . . I know Harry would have broken up with his stupid Ravenclaw eventually. I’m sure of it. He was so in love with Draco.”
“Potter’s always been stupid,” Blaine grumbled.
“He loves Draco, Blaise,” she said insistently, pulling away from him. Blaise raised a brow. Her breath was coming out in short, sharp bursts. “I know he does. The way he would talk about him sometimes . . . He sounded like a bloody Hufflepuff!”
“Pans,” he said softly, a small, sad smile playing on his face.
“No.” She stood up suddenly, glaring down at Blaise with a fire in her eyes. “Harry was . . . he was in love with him.” She felt tears building in her eyes again. This was all so unfair. If that stupid Weasley girl had just minded her own business Harry would have figured it out. She knew it. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. She’d gotten to know him recently, because of Draco. She’d been forced to give him a chance . . . and he’d initiated it! He could be an oblivious, stubborn idiot sometimes, yes. But now she could finally see what everyone else saw. What Granger and Weasley saw in him; what had given them so much faith in that boy during the war. It was strange, because just as she was beginning to notice it, everyone in the school seemed to have forgotten. But she knew, even if the whole school wanted to pretend it was no longer true. Even if she hated him again.
Harry Potter was a good person. As much as she would have liked to strangle him; as impossible as she knew it would be to talk to him without flinging a hex, she knew it was true. What else would have possessed a person to speak the way he had so often about Draco, especially considering the part he’d played in the war?
“Where are you going?” Blaise asked, standing up, as she moved toward the entrance to the common room, her hands shaking with anger and determination. With the force of her resentment. Because this situation was just so utterly, unbearably unfair.
“Make sure to check on Draco,” she said, and swiftly made her exit.
* * *
Not Sirius, nor Dumbledore, nor Merlin himself could have prepared Harry for the spectacle following dinner.
Draco hadn’t been there (as per usual at mealtimes in the last four days), and Harry’s stomach had been churning uncomfortably as he ate, and was continuing to do so as he exited the Great Hall behind and alongside a great many other students. He couldn’t understand why there was a backup. Sure, there were a lot of students, but the entrance hall was bigger than the Durselys’ whole bloody house. There’d never been a doorjamb before in his six and a half years at the school.
It was as he managed to struggle through a group of unmoving second years that he first heard the shouting. It sent a shiver down his spine, because that was Ginny’s voice.
“. . . doesn’t matter anyway!” she shrieked. Peering above a few heads, Harry could make out Pansy standing a few feet away from Ginny, both girls at the center of a circle of students watching the fight eagerly. “He was cheating on Anthony! Someone had to tell him, because Harry clearly wasn’t!”
“You’re such a selfish bitch!” Pansy shouted. Harry’s eyes went wide with mild terror. He couldn’t be sure whether he was more angry or terrified that Pansy had just called Ginny a selfish bitch. Clearly she was unaware of the fact that Weasley women could be scarier than Voldemort when they wanted to. “Everyone knows you did it because you’re bitter that you can’t have him, Weasley!”
Ginny balked. “How dare you -”
“Harry loved him!” Pansy yelled over her. This effectively shut Ginny up. Harry felt heat crawling over his cheeks and down his neck like flames. He wanted to shrink into the crowd, or sink into the foundations of the castle; anything to stop people from beginning to notice him and stare unabashedly. “If you actually cared about Harry then you would have left well enough alone! You would have seen how happy he was with Draco! Instead of dropping him like an old toy you would have talked to him! “
Ginny scoffed and crossed her arms across his chest. “Since when do you defend him, Parkinson?”
“I’m not defending him,” Pansy hissed. “Everything he did was shitty. He hurt Draco, and I won’t forgive him for it.” It felt as though cold tendrils were creeping into his belly and wrapping around his organs. His heart. His lungs. Squeezing. His chest felt tight, like he couldn’t take in enough air. “But at least I know that they were happy, and if it weren’t for you, he would have done the right thing eventually. I think it says something that you didn’t trust him.”
“Fuck you!” Ginny screamed, and Harry noticed tears trailing down her cheeks. “You’re just as bad, condoning a relationship based on lies! You don’t even know Harry!” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Less than a year ago you were perfectly happy to give him up to You-Know-Who, if I remember correctly -!”
“Shut up!”
"Make me!”
Just as it looked as though Pansy would lunge at Ginny, McGonagall stepped through the crowd and placed herself between the two girls.
“Enough!” she said sharply. “Fifteen points each from Gryffindor and Slytherin for language and sheer lack of self-control.” She glared at them in turn. “Return to your Houses immediately. All of you.”
Harry stood stock still as the sea of students parted around him and drifted off to their respective Houses. Pansy stomped down the stairs without looking back, but he saw Ginny glance over her shoulder as she climbed up the marble staircase. She spotted him and shot him a glare full of loathing.
Only when students had stopped blatantly staring did he pull out his Cloak and drape it over himself, then race up the stairs and down a corridor, running into the first empty classroom he could find and finally, finally breaking down against a wall.
Chapter Twenty-Three | Page of Contents | Chapter Twenty-Five