The Same Mistake

Draco glared into the black eyes of Severus Snape. “I don’t have to tell you anything!”

“You think it goes unnoticed by the Dark Lord how much time you spend with the girl? You had a task. It would seem you have failed. Her family is with the Order, that much is obvious. They were unyielding to the Dark Lord’s message, and now they are mysteriously untraceable.” Snape paced before Draco, his black robe billowing behind him.

The candles flickered in Snape’s dungeon office as his robe sent a continual wave of air towards them. Draco’s right hand clutched his wand, the smooth wood chaffing his palm as he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. A sense of overwhelming hatred and despair fogged all of Draco’s senses.

“And what does it matter?” He shouted, more out of control than he had ever felt before. “I don’t give a damn if Ellie’s parents are with the Order! Ellie isn’t. Ellie is with me and that needs to be enough for the Dark Lord right now. I have two tasks I’m working on, if you haven’t forgotten Snape. One, I am sure, the Dark Lord qualifies as more important than the other.”

Snape took a deliberate step forward, encroaching on Draco’s personal space. “I would not,” he said softly, “speak so freely of the Dark Lord. It was my impression that you had a task assigned to you because your father failed. I would not wish the same fate upon you, Draco. I only wish to help, and if the girl is a problem for you, it could be arranged to have another –“

“No!” Draco said fiercely. “Ellie is not a problem.”

“Then let us hope that next time we speak, you shall be more respectful of the Lord who gave such an important task. Otherwise, he might not be so understanding of your failure with the task you deem less important.” Snape stepped away, but his black eyes remained firm on Draco’s.

A dull rage boiled deep within Draco. “You can tell the Dark Lord that Ellie shall be his before the other falls.” He turned to sweep from the room, but Snape’s final words caught him mid-stride.

“I do wish to believe you are correct in your assumption, Draco. For, the Dark Lord has spoken to me of having Fenrir Greyback deal with the girl when he has the chance to . . . cross paths with her.”

Horror slid down Draco’s insides, twisting his stomach and making him feel ill. He stormed from the room, but very quickly his footfalls became slow. All the thoughts, the fears that he had been holding in for months, literal months, crashed down.

Stumbling, his vision blurred, Draco collapsed in a marble stall. He gripped the sides of the toilet, his fingers numb from the force with which he held it. But the wave of nausea he thought he would expel did not come. Instead, panic sobs wracked his exhausted frame.

Fenrir. Fenrir would make a meal out of Ellie. So that was the ultimate plan. If he failed, Draco would not be the first to die. Rather, he would watch the Dark Lord destroy everyone he cared about, not kill them, destroy them. Maybe the Dark Lord would keep Ellie around as a werewolf, as disgusting creature that he would be murdered for caring about. And he would care, because no matter what Ellie was, he would always love her.

Yes, he loved Ellie. With everything in him he loved her and it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. He could not disentangle his thoughts from her, he could not focus on his mission and that put her in more danger than Dumbledore’s death would.

Out of his echoing sobs, Draco made out a new voice, one that both offered him comfort and ate at his nerves.

“Draco?” Moaning Myrtles wavering voice spoke from right beside his shoulder.

Draco clambered to his feet, using his sleeve to wipe his face cleaning, he nodded to Myrtle. “I didn’t mean to cause such a rack,” he said in way of an apology.

“No of course not,” Myrtle cooed.

Moaning Myrtle had been more than understanding of all of Draco’s recent late night trips to this particular bathroom. More than once he had felt the need to escape either the confines of his common room or the suffocation he felt in the Room of Requirement. He came here, to this never used bathroom to be alone. But there was Myrtle, always wanting to help, enjoying someone else being as miserable as she was.

It wasn’t something he had told Ellie about. Draco didn’t doubt that she would perfectly fine with his strange relationship with Myrtle, but he still had too much pride to confess that he had been sobbing his eyes out in a girls’ bathroom. A girls’ bathroom still haunted by the ghost of its occupant, who had, on various occasions, intimated that she would be willing to be more than just Draco’s confidant.

Standing before one of the aged, but still crystal clear mirrors, Draco absorbed his dramatically altered appearance. Purple shadows lurked beneath his eyes; his cheeks were hallowed out making him look gaunt; his skin was so pale it looked almost translucent. Overall, it was not his most flattering look.

“You can tell me what’s wrong, Draco. I won’t tell anyone,” Myrtle floated up beside him, her already large eyes enlarged by her glasses. “I’ll help you.”

And those three words broke all Draco’s bravado, because no one could help him and if he failed, the Dark Lord would take Ellie and that, more than anything else, would kill him. Behind him, Draco heard the door to the bathroom creak open.