[Chapter Twenty Two: Progress. Edited.]

I'd awoken in a cold sweat, and sat bolt-upright. I felt as though I'd had a nightmare, maybe, but I couldn't slightly remember what it was. I felt as if I'd forgotten something really important. The time on the clock, said it was five minutes until I was supposed to get up. So, it seemed, it was just another ordinary day at Hogwarts.

We sat at breakfast on the ever-so-normal morning when post came. Despite Harry, Ron, Hermione and myself being total social rejects, Harry got a letter.

"It's hatching," Harry read out loud in a whisper.

"What is?" I asked.

"Something from an egg," Hermione said, trying to use some form of code. I didn't catch on.

"Someone has chickens?"

"The dragon, Willow," Harry sighed.

I swore.

Ron tried to make us skip Herbology but Hermione wouldn't let us.

"Come on, how many times are we gonna see a dragon hatching?" Ron argued.

"We've got lessons. We'll get in trouble! And that's nothing compared to what Hagrid is going to be in when someone finds out what he is doing."

"Shut up!" Harry whispered.

My brother was standing only a few feet from us. He had stopped dead and was listening. I shuddered. How much had he heard? He had a creepy twisted smile on his face.

I summoned up some fake confidence, "Want me to wipe that smirk off you, Draco?"

"It's permanent... Or it will be." he said, smug, walking off.

"He's planning something. I've seen that look before..." On his father. "See the separation? His, not our! I'm so proud," my friends gave me weird looks. "Sorry."

"You know, you should be nicer to Malfoy," Harry mused.

"What?"

He did help me escape the manor, but he said he'd be an arse to me. It's only natural that I return the favour.

"Look, we spoke to Malfoy when you were in the hospital wing. He was really worried about you Willow. For a few days, we put our differences aside to talk."

"How corny," I said, unable to help myself.

"It wasn't so corny when you were almost dead." Ron said flatly.

"Can we not, please?"

"Ignoring the topic won't make it go away, Willow." Hermione told me quietly.

"I know," I sighed. I'd been trying to talk to the counsellors, I really had. But they'd ask about Christmas Eve and I'd freeze up and run away. No one really understood how hard I was trying. "Suicide attempts aside," I started, trying to change the topic with a very terrible sense of humour, "How much do you think Malfoy just heard?"

"Did you say suicide attempt?" Ernie McMillan, a Hufflepuff in our class asked.

I groaned, "Is it Arsehole Eavesdropping Day?"

"Ernie, you only got half the conversation," Hermione added.

"Why don't you fill me in on what I missed out on then?" He said, and I groaned.

"It's an in-joke, Ernie." Harry said, "It's too complicated to explain."

"Why were you in the Hospital Wing, Willow?"

"I was sick."

"With what?"

"She had the flu, Ernie," Hermione said, butting in and saving me from having to think on the spot.

"My Dad's a healer, and they have cures for the flu."

"It was a bad flu." Harry said.

"Combined with diarrhoea." Ron added.

"Very contagious." I said, nodding.

"Hmm," Ernie smirked and walked into the greenhouse.

I exchanged looks with my friends, and we were all thinking something along the lines of 'is life ever easy?'

We skipped down to Hagrid's hut in our morning break. Well, I skipped, the others walked. When we arrived Hagrid looked flushed and excited.

"It's almost out," he said proudly.

We pulled up chairs around the table and watched in anticipation. There was a cracking noise and the egg split open. The baby dragon flopped onto the table. It was quite hideous in my opinion. Its spiny wings were huge compared to its skinny jet body; it had a long snout with wide nostrils, the stubs of horns and bulging, orange eyes.

I, with some effort, restrained myself from commenting on the ugliness. I did, however, edge my chair away. It sneezed. A couple of sparks flew out of its snout; right were my face would have been.

"Isn't he beautiful?" Hagrid murmured. He reached out a hand to stroke the dragon's head. It snapped at his fingers, showing pointed fangs.

"Bless him, look, he knows his mommy!" said Hagrid.

"Hagrid," said Hermione, "how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow, exactly." Hagrid was about to answer when the colour suddenly drained from his face -- he leapt to his feet and ran to the window.

"What's the matter?" Harry asked in alarm.

"Someone was lookin' through the gap in the curtains – it's a kid – he's running back to the school."

Harry and I were the first ones at the door.

There was no mistaking it, even at this distance.

Draco Malfoy had seen the dragon.

By the time we sat down for dinner that night, I'd been cast so many peculiar looks that it was starting to get weird. It was like when you make eye-contact with the same person ten times in a row, and it's awkward and uncomfortable, and you want to know why they keep looking up at you, or if it's all just coincidental and weird. Did I mention it was weird?

"Hermione," I said quietly. She was sitting next to me, and kept looking around. "Am I being really self-absorbed, or are we drawing a lot of attention?"

"I was just thinking the same thing," She muttered. "You don't think Malfoy has anything to do with it?"

"No, they'd be staring at Hagrid then..." I could feel eyes looking at me from every direction.

"Will, Hermione, did you guys want to get dinner 'to-go'?" Harry asked from across the table.

"Yes," We said in unison, and we loaded our plates up and stole them - they turned into plastic containers once we left the hall.

"We were getting creepy looks in there, weren't we?" Ron asked. "I thought we were."

"You don't think Malfoy –––" Harry started, as we walked up the marble staircase.

"No, Will said everyone would be staring Hagrid down, not us." Hermione said.

"Besides, if he's anything like our – his – father, he'll want us to stew on it for a few days," I added.

We walked in silence for a few moments, until Harry let out a gasp.

"You don't think – Ernie," He didn't finish the sentence, but he didn't have to. I felt a jolt in my stomach. If Ernie hadn't believed us, which was possible because we're terrible liars, and told anyone...

"It's probably only coincidence," I said, but I didn't believe a word of it.

We grabbed the best seats by the fire place, and started on our homework, just as the other Gryffindor's started to slowly head up from dinner.

"Will," Whispered a voice at my shoulder. George had crouched beside me, his red hair looked like fire in the light.

"Yeah?"

"They know," He said, "Everyone knows."

I took a shuddery breath as I felt my heart sink.

"Not fair."

"I know," he said kindly. "There's a lot of rumours about it though, and well, no one knows the true truth."

"Except me."

Annabeth made her way over to us and sat next to me, "Alright. The shit has hit the fan."

"I thought you said people knew about it, already."

"Here's one tip that you need to remember for your whole life – one rumours start to fly, there's no stopping them. People forget the truth in place of myth. It's like, in my second year I played Quidditch – our team sucked, by the way. I'm terrible. A Hufflepuff literally jumped off their broom mid-air to push me off mine, and I fell the whole way to the ground. I broke both my legs, my arm and half my ribs. It was really bad. Anyway, everyone had seen what happened. Everyone knew the truth. Until someone decided to spread rumours about it. Suddenly, I'd jumped off my broom to gain sympathy. I'd hexed the Hufflepuff girl. I'd fallen. All these lies took over the truth, because people are sick."

"That's so unfair!"

"I'm sure you, of all people, Willow, know life is less than fair." Annabeth gave my shoulder a squeeze. "Basically, you've got two options. You can let this beat you, and crawl away and hide. Or you can take control of it and have a bit of fun."

"Whatever you want to do, Will," George said. "We're all here for you. And we're all happy to punch people."

The next week Draco kept a nasty smile on his face. It was like the one his dad used to show before he would use the cruciatus curse on me and watched me cower away from him.

We spent our free time in Hagrid's hut trying to talk sense into him. I told him of all the crap that could happen, I even researched it, (mostly because the library was a no-go-zone for 'Willow is a mental case' gossip) but he ignored me.

He decided to call it Norbert.

"Hagrid, god dammit!" I exclaimed one day. "Malfoy knows you have Norbert, and he is gonna get you in trouble! I know him! I know what he is capable of!" I had worked myself into a state, and was standing up. I didn't remember doing that. "And Norbert is a stupid name!"

Hermione pushed me over, onto the lounge, and shoved a glass of water into my hand.

"I can't just dump 'im!" Hagrid said.

Harry turned to Ron.

"Charlie," he said suddenly.

"You're losing it too. I'm Ron, remember."

"No -- Charlie -- your brother, Charlie. In Romania. Studying dragons. We could send Norbert to him. Charlie can take care of him and then put him back in the wild!"

"Brilliant!" said Ron. "How about it, Hagrid?"

In the end, Hagrid agreed that we could send an owl to Charlie to ask him.

The rest of the week dragged on forever, with people constantly asking how I was; asking me all kinds of crap about my mental health all hours of the day.

"If you got a bad mark, would you try to kill yourself again?"

"If someone called you ugly, would you want to die?"

Tuesday meant I had another session with my counsellor.

"Wassabi?" I asked the woman.

"I'm fine," she replied, and I was scared that she actually knew what I'd said. "How are you?"

I shrugged, waved my hands up and down and made a non-committal noise.

"Willow, just to verify, you've gone through sixteen counsellors?"

"Yes." I sat down.

"Why is that?"

"Because they annoy me."

"Fair enough, we're all entitled to our opinions. And there's nothing worse than being forced to open up to someone you don't want to open up to," She said, and she smiled at me kindly. "So what's happening in your life right now?"

It was an odd question, all of them had gotten straight to – 'so, how was your Christmas holiday?' which made me leave.

"A lot." I answered.

"Could you be a little specific? What happened last Wednesday, for example?"

"Uh, well, a boy in my year, Ernie, overheard a conversation I was having with friends, and he grilled me, and then spread the news of my suicide attempt." I spoke very casual about the whole thing. "So yeah, things could be better."

"Does everyone have the facts, or is there bizarre theories?"

"Well, the girls who share my dorm, are convinced that I flung myself off of the Astronomy tower, so that's interesting."

"Do they have any theories as to why you did it?"

"Well, because it was the same day as a Quidditch match, there were a few people saying I was upset that Slytherin lost, or that I was upset I hadn't made the Gryffindor team...People are weird."

"You're telling me," She smirked. "So, what was the real reason that you did it?"

I somehow found a way to tell the truth, despite twisting it a little to avoid Christmas Eve and Lucius Malfoy and the unforgivable curses.

"So, basically, I'm just really stressed at the moment."

"What are you stressed about?"

"This is confidential right?"

"Of course."

"For starters, about gossip – not that I care, but I do care. If that makes any sense. Like, people just keep asking me all of these goddamn questions and it is actually not their business. And, well, one of my friends has an illegal dragon in his hut. He wants to raise it. And my brother knows about it and can spill the beans any minute. Then there's how all the teachers watch me in class as though I'm about to kill myself at any given point." I said. "Oh, and there's exams, but eh, I don't care about them much." I added. "I mean I do, but I don't."

"I love dragons. Haha, how unprofessional. I mean, how does that make you feel?"

"Sleepy, I just want to sleep, all the time." I said.

"Go to bed then," Mary grinned. "Do you still have nightmares?"

"No, I just don't sleep. I'm too scared to sleep."

"Here," she said, writing something down. "It's a script for dreamless sleep potion. Take it to Madam Pomfrey, and she'll give you some. She'll explain it all to you."

"Thanks," I smiled.

One successful counselling session that made me not feel completely helpless. It was a start – a late start, but a start all the same.