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The wards had activated themselves and Tom could feel the pressure just below the surface of his skin. He had closed the book he had been reading and went back upstairs to Gryffindor tower, as silently as ever and as cautious as he could possibly be considering the circumstances.

He hadn't known just what he'd see when he came up there. Perhaps a noose. Perhaps a knife. Perhaps a smoking wand that Draco did not dare to pick up.

He found a sobbing Draco instead, a more repulsive sight Tom could not possibly come up with now. The wailing was annoying and gave him an earache. He shut the door to Draco's room, locking and warding it with a silencing charm so as to spare anyone else the pitiful cries.

On the floor next to Draco, the etiquette book lay, looking as innocuous as a book could possibly look when surrounded by broken glass. Like a murder weapon that had been carelessly left next to the victim, it was open upon chapter four that dealt with blood traitors.

The window had been shattered and what Draco had done was more than a little obvious, else the charm would not have acted upon Tom as it did. All the same, it was better to hear it from Draco's own lips.

Tom knelt down next to Draco and asked, "What did you do?"

"AAAH!!" Draco scampered back, not having heard Tom come in, not having known that Tom would suddenly be back, right in his face, staring down at him with kindness? The scamper backwards drove Draco's hand into the broken glass upon the floor and he hurt. He hurt because he hadn't been trying to hurt himself in the first place.

"I'm not going to hurt you." Tom's voice was soothing, sweet, comforting even. "Easy. Calm down."

Rather than subue Draco, Tom's words, or his presence, had the younger boy in tears. "No Crucio, please, please, don't do it, please.." His words made little sense to Tom, all jumbled up together, but he got the gist of it well enough.

"I won't. Here. Get on the bed." With that, Tom cast a wandless reparo charm upon the window, forcing it back together. He had no time to admire the bloodtrails Draco had left upon the carpet when his hands slid across it.

"Shh, calm down. I won't hurt you." Tom reached out and touched Draco's hand, knowing that this was going to be a difficult task. Draco jumped badly, a strained sound of fear making its way out of his throat even as Tom carefully plucked out the tiny slivers of glass from Draco's hand. "Calm yourself," he repeated, driving the idea home to Draco.

Not that Draco appreciated it, of course. He spent his time huddled up in a permanent flinch. At least his sobbing stopped, of which Tom was grateful for. The boy reminded him of a cow that constantly needed to be milked and never stopped letting its owner know that.

Once the glass slivers were out of Draco's hand, Tom began casting his healing charms upon the broken skin, taking his time with the spell, not wanting to miss anything. "I need you to listen to me, Draco. What I'm about to say is very important." Tom paused to look Draco right in the eyes. "Can you do that?"

Draco could not. His thoughts spun inward, thinking only of the chapter he had just read and knowing precisely what he was now. A blood traitor. A disgusting blood traitor. It was only right that he do away with himself. It was only right that he-

"I put a charm on you to make sure you couldn't harm yourself."

If only he could get through to Tom what he learned and what he truly was-

"But the charm only protects you. The pain you try to give to yourself needs to go somewhere else."

Why wasn't Tom listening? Why wasn't he understand this?

"I bound the charm to blood, Draco."

Draco curled up into a ball, trying to look away from Tom's burning eyes. He knew he should die. He knew he should suffer. But he couldn't. He couldn't because of that stupid spell. He was trapped.

"I bound the other end of the charm to your parents."

THAT got Draco's attention as Tom knew it would. In that split second, Draco forgot how to breathe. He forgot how to do anything else except stare at Tom. Stare at Tom and Tom's kind expression, his patient expression, his tender expression. And his eyes that held nothing but coldness.

"You see, everything needs to go somewhere. Charms divert the flow, you see. So I diverted your pain onto them. Keep in mind that it's only when you try to hurt yourself that they get hurt."

Draco's eyes were wide as saucers while his imagination, his vivid imagination spun images of his parents lying on the floor, bleeding their lives out because of him.

"So it's not a good thing to try and hurt yourself." And still, Tom's kind voice went on.

Draco had never felt such horror as what was being told to him or what he was envisioning. Worse than a blood traitor. What he had done was potentially kill his parents! Had it already happened? Were his parents already dead? He had been the cause of this! Him and no one else!

"Now, are you going to try injuring yourself again?" Oh, and Tom knew Draco's internal turmoil. The anguish Draco was letting out was a feast for the soul and Tom loved each and every second of it. There was no better torture than that of the psychological and seeing the horror, the fear, the guilt in Draco's eyes was positively breathtaking.

No words could express the trauma Draco was going through. The two people in the world that he loved more than anything, dead by his hand, by his mistake. He felt sick, petrified, all twisted up in knots and the book had said, the book had said what he had to do, hadn't it? It had said what he should do!

"Now, the more time I spend with you here, the less time I have to go save your parents. I can't leave, though. Not until I'm sure you won't do such things ever again. Shall we discuss things some more while your parents bleed?" How could Tom sound so calm when his parents were dying?

Draco was as green as moss, unable to do anything but listen to Tom.

"Or will you be good and start acting like a Pureblood?"

Draco shook his head no, rapidly. "I can't act like a pureblood but I won't do this again don't wait here! PLEASE!" Please, go to my parents, he wanted to say, praying that it wasn't too late for them to be saved!

"You will finish reading the book. You will not take any more drastic actions. You will stay in your room and not act like a drama queen. Understand?" Tom understood Draco's panic perfectly. He knew that he was being rushed out of the room and he didn't much care. First off, he needed to make certain Draco wouldn't try harming himself again. Not without his explicit permission. While the charm would keep Draco from doing any damage to himself, Tom disliked the feeling of being pulled toward Draco whenever the need to self-injure took over the idiot.

Draco nodded frantically, terribly confused for the book said that he deserved to die, but now he would do anything to get Tom out of the room and to his parents. Paralyzed with the horror that had come from his own hands, he dared not move again.

"Good boy," Tom said, getting up. "Get reading." He did not start to head out until he saw Draco's hand reaching for the book, trembling under the weight of what had just transpired.

Draco knew he was working with contradictory instructions. He couldn't do what the book said but he was supposed to act like a Pureblood, yet how could he when he was deemed a blood traitor? He wanted to scream, to act out, to hide, to just explode but he didn't.

He continued to read the book.

Tom laughed the entire way back to the Slytherin dorms.