Draco decided he'd heard enough. He didn't care what else his father had to say, and he certainly didn't care to listen to any more blather from Harry, who was going on about things Marsha had told him, now. Lines of communication, something like that. It was all a lot of rubbish. There were times when a man just needed to be alone. All alone. And this was one of them.
Draco cast a silencing spell across the door, then paused a moment to think. With Harry so disgustingly concerned, Draco wouldn't put it past him to send Sals slinking in here to check on Draco. So perhaps a breachment spell as well, Draco decided.
Once that was done, there seemed nothing left to do. Whatever had been holding Draco upright abruptly vanished. It was as if his bones all at once turned to mush. Draco actually staggered as he made his way across the room and toward his bed. He didn't think he'd ever been so tired before. Collapsing atop his covers, he rolled on his side, pulling a plush pillow over his face. He felt like he was sinking deep into the mattress, being swallowed by softness and warmth and oblivion.
It was only his body that was exhausted, though. His mind was alive and alert, and kept spinning into thought.
Rhiannon. Her face, her hair, her eyes. The sound of her voice when she sang. The soft noises she'd made every time that Draco had kissed her . . .
Draco rolled onto his other side, muttering curses. This was awful! He didn't want to think or remember; he wanted to sink into the oblivion the bed had promised! He wanted all this pain to go away.
Even if it meant that he had to go away with it.
Merlin, did Fate have no mercy? His silencing charm had worked well enough, but what use was it? He could still hear voices in his head. Not just Rhiannon's, either. Harry's voice was there, and Severus', the one swimming in compassion, the other calmer. Fatherly.
Draco couldn't stand it.
Right now, Harry and Severus were just reminders of how Draco had let love cloud his judgment. How he'd made an absolute fool out of himself, in fact. A lovestruck fool. Severus and Harry might not have been laughing at him, but they'd known the truth that he'd been too blind to see.
Suddenly the bed wasn't the least bit comfortable. Draco started hurting all over, like he'd been trampled. Like he'd been stomped on from head to toe. Like his pride had been stripped away, layer after layer of it, until it was left bare and bleeding. But of course, he should feel that way, after he'd been so phenomenally stupid.
Falling in love with a Muggle girl! Lucius would be rolling in his grave, if he had a grave. As it was, that statue was probably cracking apart, or something.
Not that Draco cared about that. The only thing that bothered him was the fact that on this issue, Lucius was right! Falling in love with a Muggle was beyond irresponsible. In any other pureblood, he'd have called such conduct heinous. Or worse.
And Draco had done more than just fall in love with a Muggle girl. He'd let that Muggle kiss him, touch him. He'd let her get down on her knees, her hands caressing his thighs, her fingers tugging at the top button on his trousers . . .
Draco shoved his knuckles into his mouth and bit down on them. It was that, or scream. He was thinking after all! What was he, a sodding Hufflepuff? A weak-minded fool?
Well, even the strongest individual needed outside assistance now and again. That was what magic was for, wasn't it? Nobody with an ounce of brains would put up with a missing bone, not when skele-grow could set it right. And if Draco needed something to settle his mind . . . well, that was only to be expected. He had been dealt a terrible blow, after all, finding out that the most perfect girl in the world wasn't even a part of his world.
So . . . something to help him stop all this thinking. The answer to that was easy enough, and it was as close as Harry's bedside drawer. Or in this case, since Draco was too tired to get up, as close as a summoning charm.
Thank goodness that Harry was finally back to taking normal-strength potions! Not that five-times normal strength sounded bad, come to think of it. But even his impulse control problem wasn't enough to make him that reckless. At least, he didn't think it was. Good thing he didn't have to find out.
Draco downed a good swallow of his brother's Dreamless Sleep potion, and after that, he felt much better. He wasn't going to think, no matter what Severus said. He was going to sleep, and for once, the girl of his dreams wasn't going to be in them.
------------------------------------------------------
As plans went, that one didn't work so well. Oh, he didn't dream, certainly; Severus' potion making couldn't be faulted. He woke up thinking of Rhiannon, though.
Dreamless Sleep or no, he woke up with her name hovering on his lips. He was actually whispering it.
Draco sat up and hung his head in his hands as fresh pain washed over him. He'd thought he'd known what it was to feel his own heart breaking. When Pansy had died, he'd been devastated. And then when he'd found out that she'd played him for a fool, all along, his heart had broken all over again.
This was worse, though. A lot worse. Maybe because this time, he had no-one to blame but himself. With Pansy, he'd had her attackers to hate, though of course he hadn't known at the time just who they were. And then he'd had her to despise. She'd tricked him. Their whole romance--the last few months of it, at any rate--had been nothing but a sham. A scheme. A plot.
He couldn't say that about his relationship with Rhiannon. She hadn't been trying to fool him into thinking she was something she wasn't. Draco had done that himself, all on his own.
When he thought now of the stories he'd made up in an effort to believe her magical, he felt his stomach churn. Telling Harry that she must be passing as a Muggle . . . and then insisting that she was a witch who didn't know about magic! His rationalisations seemed pathetic, now. Pathetically thin. Incredible, in fact, in the truest sense of the word.
Not credible.
And Draco had believed them, one after another, no matter that each had been more ludicrous than the last. He'd believed them with his whole heart. He'd been looking forward to the day when he could laugh in Harry's face, and say, I told you so.
Instead, Harry was the one who could say that to him, if he wanted.
He hadn't said it yet, which mildly amazed Draco when he thought about it. Harry had seemed so condescending earlier. At least, Draco had thought that at the time. Looking back on it, though, he couldn't really point to anything to support that idea. He had the feeling now that he hadn't been thinking straight, and no wonder. Draco had taken some pretty hard falls from his broom before, and hearing that bell hadn't been too different, actually. He'd been abruptly jolted out of his element, and into another world.
So perhaps it only stood to reason that he'd taken Harry's concern the wrong way.
Though he still didn't much care for Harry thinking that he might hex Rhiannon.
Harry hadn't bragged about how clever he was to have figured out she was a Muggle, though -- that was the point. He hadn't gone on about Draco being blind and stubborn about all things Rhiannon, even though Draco had been unmistakably blind and stupid.
Well, that went to show how good a brother he was, Draco decided, nodding as he rolled to sit up. Harry was being the good son with that, of course, but for once, Draco didn't resent him for it. He was grateful for it, actually. If Harry had got smarmy about the whole thing, Draco might have hexed him, right there in the reception area of the squib home, and then Harry might have fought back with some stronger-than-usual magic, and then they'd have had to end up Obliviating Darswaithe and Emmeleia.
Severus, no doubt, wouldn't have been too happy about that entire sequence of events.