Her sobs echoed off the shattered porcelain, the broken shards of mirror that lay all around her, and into Harry’s heart. He did not shy away from them, and took them as the tears continued to fall from Draceana’s face until she finally looked up.
Her hand, trembling, reached for him. “Help me.”
Harry did not allow for any hesitation, for the chains of grudges past to pull him into inaction. He looked her in her eyes, a softness to his features that he’d never shared with her before, and a gasp filled her lungs as he took her hand.
“I will.”
2/2
It was the crying that Harry heard first.
He pushed open the bathroom door with a soft hand, the muffled sobs beyond it clearing to weeping that cut into his heart. Draceana was there, her back to him and hands clutched to the sink, stained by blackened tears. Her head was bowed, white-blond hair draped over to hide her face, but Harry could already envision what it looked like.
“Don’t…” Moaning Myrtyle’s voice, filled with a mix of pity and shared sadness that echoed out from one of the cubicles. “Don’t…tell me what’s wrong…I can help you…”
“No one can help me.” Draceana’s body was shaking. “I can’t do it…I can’t…It won’t work…I don’t want to…I didn’t want any of this…but unless I do it soon…he says he’ll kill me…”
The sight rooted Harry in place. He’d seen the conflict in her eyes so many times over the past few years, the tears that had built within them, but never fallen…until now. A slight shift in her head showed the black streaks that trailed down Draceana’s face, the dark rings of her mascara blending with the sunken look in her despairing, silver eyes. A side of her that he’d never seen was so clearly shown through the cracked mirror, so bare that it stunned him.
Then, she look up, and their eyes met.
Draceana whipped around, wand drawn and a snarl that carried a hex ripping from her lips. Instinct pulled Harry to the side, the curse whipping by and shattering a lantern that was right next to his head. He pulled his wand from his robe and point it at Draceana, but the sight of her broken visage stopped the spell on his tongue.
She was not so hesitant.
Another curse lashed out from her blackened wand, forcing Harry to throw himself out of the way and let a bin take the hex instead. It exploded into a mass of debris, the boom sending a slight ring through his ears.
“No! No! Stop it!” Myrtle’s voice bounced across the walls of the tiled room, her attempts to soothe only adding to the chaos. “Stop! STOP!”
Harry rushed to his feet, but Draceana’s next spell was already spoken.
“Stupefy!”
He flicked his wand up to deflect the spell, shattering a mirror in a flash of red light, but it was in this exchange that he felt no hate in the spell. What was thrown at him wasn’t the curse of a Death Eater, it was a cry of desperation from a girl at the end of her rope. The impulse to strike back left him then, for he knew what flew from Draceana’s wand and lips were everything that had been bubbling within her, everything that she had tried so hard to contain for who knows how long.
And he would listen.
Spell and after spell flew from her wand, each deflection shattering the room even further, but that was no concern in Harry’s mind.
“WHY?! Why did it fall to me?! What have I done to deserve this?!” The tears streaked down her face in greater number. “I’ve done everything to keep my family’s honor! I’ve played by the rules, I respected my blood! Why must I be tormented like this?! Why must my fate be pulled into the mire no matter how much I try to pull myself out? WHY?!”
Harry said nothing and continued to deflect her spells. He could feel them grow weaker with each cast, all except the following one.
“And you…!” A blast of red surged from Draceana’s wand, rocking Harry back as he blocked it. “Great Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived! How wondrous it must feel to be bestowed adulation so often, to be praised by those who matter as easily as breathing. Do you know what I’ve been through because of you?! The pain you’ve given my heart?! My very soul?! No, of course you haven’t! Every time you’ve looked at me I could see the disdain in your eyes, that lack of the light that always seemed to find Cho and that Weasley girl. Why am I not allowed those eyes? After all I’ve done for you?!”
The last of her spells left her wand in a trickle that Harry let fall weakly against his chest. It stung, but he knew it was nothing in the face of her pain. Draceana fell to the ground of the destroyed bathroom, and wept.
1/2