This chapter contains emotional trauma, mentions of death, and violent actions. Please read with caution.

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'' Please hurry.''

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Amelie Avery.

It wasn't in an actual reality to her anymore.

The way her eyes stung by the bright light crackling into her room from the hallway every time Adrian opened the door made her mind dizzy.

How the food he brought her was barely enough to feed a child. He simply gave her the very minimum to survive, and he still came, several times a day, to punish her.

To mark her body for the worst and Amelie did everything in her power not to let it affect her. Not to allow herself to cave into his brutal, inhuman acts, but it started to get to her.

How could it not — three months of nothing but plain torture was nearly more than she could handle. She was strong, indeed, but her body was frail, and it undoubtedly weakened for each day that passed.

Amelie had worked so hard. She had mastered loving herself and cherished everything around her, but that was slowly coming to an end.

Adrian was taking it all away from her again, inch by inch — to a point where she thought about taking her own life to be free, but still, she couldn't leave the people she loved so dearly behind.

That was the only thing that managed to keep her safe within the walls of Adrian's hell — Draco and Theodore, not a minute clocked without them lingering in her mind.

Amelie sleeping next to Draco with his arms protectingly wrapped around her, his nose buried in her hair, and the tips of her fingers gently tracing meaningful words upon his chest, across his scars over and over — or Theodore, how he always sat close to her, shoulder to shoulder only because he wanted to feel the warmth of her.

He wished to be as near her as he possibly could and never to leave her side. They were best friends, almost belonging to one another.

Her mind often crossed Teddy and how she wished she'd cherished the small moments with her best friend more, even if he was throwing snowballs at her or braiding her hair so messily that it was tangled for days — walking, oh how she loved just walking while talking about everything with him.

He always made sure that she smiled. That her lips arched in a curve and that laughter escaped her throat. It was one of his many talents. He always made Amelie happy.

Her head shook, and her hands grasped at her throat. It turned hard to breathe. The air thickened towards the afternoon, and everything hurt a bit more.

Amelie was cold. Her skin shivered by the spell Adrian had cursed her with, to torment her constantly. He didn't want her to be comfortable, not one bit, but he still didn't want her to pass.

She could hear, at night, how he brought other girls home. She had to listen to how he satisfied them and how they pleased him for hours.

Adrian was too disgusted with what Amelie and Draco had done — that he refused to touch her in that way, but he still craved for her to hurt. He desired her to hear the echoing sounds of moans and screams as he slept with someone else in the room next to hers.

He believed that it affected her — when it honestly didn't. Amelie did care for Adrian, but not in that way anymore. Her heart belonged to someone else now, and that someone took far better care of her than Adrian had ever done.

She loved Adrian, but only out of the kindness of her heart and the memory of him before he turned absolutely vile.

Adrian wasn't always like this. He didn't turn out to be her most feared nightmare until years after they met.

There was a time when the two got to know each other — when he loved her back, and he cared for her in all the ways she deserved. Still, he never deserved her.

She was always too pure, too humble for the boy she today calls the devil, and it took a toll on him. Instead of loving her, he learned how to use her. He mastered how to wield her soft heart.

Adrian shaped Amelie. He formed her into the person he needed her to be, not who she indeed was, and then he hurt her to the extent of it. There were days, moments when they were happy together — when he kissed her head and told her all the sweet things a teenage boyfriend is supposed to tell their lover.

How beautiful she was, how worthy she lived to be, how much she meant to him, how he could never live without her, how she was his, and how he would treat her with respect.

It was wishful thinking for that to happen.

Sometimes he loved her back, she believed. Amelie hoped with all of her heart that he did, that he somewhere, within that bitter shell of his — that he loved her back.

Not enough. Even if she wished for it to be something else than imagination, she knew that he'd never cared for her enough, not to hurt her — it was never enough, and now his life was bounded to hers as he kept her locked up in a room in his childhood home.

Again, she was forced somewhere against her will. Fated to obey someone else's commands and never earn a voice of her own. She was chained within four walls.

The same room, where he'd taken the life of his mother, right in front of Amelie.

She was cursed with a spell that caused her entire body to shift in stone, and she couldn't move. Amelie couldn't speak. She could barely blink as she had to watch Adrian slaughter his own mother right in front of her.

The day it happened was a day her mind had been shutting out.

If anyone were to ask her about it — she'd be clueless. Amelie was already drained to a point where she nearly fell apart, and for her overworked mind to process Ana's death too wasn't an option for her.

It would've shattered her, only a swift thought in that direction — to that night caused her breath to stress and her pulse to quicken.

Amelie was lying, numb on the wooden floor, trying to close her eyes as he ripped his mother to pieces, and Adrian made her look. He made the tears roll down her colorless cheeks as he took another life.

He said that his mother deserved it — that she'd been dishonest about Pansy and the pregnancy, so she earned what she received, but then he left her body in Amelie's room for days until Amelie began to smell like death.

Her hair rose to scent similar to something rotten, and her skin scored in the same order as well. The scent of Ana's dead body was something Amelie could live with, it bothered her, but not as much as looking at it did.

The way Ana's skin paled, and her limbs began to sink.

Adrian left her in Amelie's room with her eyes open, and Amelie couldn't stand that. It had been too much death around her, so she — before she knew that Adrian would bring her for her shower. She used the back of her hand to settle Ana's eyelids close, and she folded her sheets over the lifeless body.

It disturbed Amelie more than anything had ever done. It caused her to feel sick, but she couldn't help but shout it out — to neglect everything traumatizing.

It was as if her head, her mind, her brain protected itself.

Her own body shut down — similar to how she fainted when he was hurting her. She seemed to do that a lot, her figure rescued itself from feeling the pain, and she passed out.

But that didn't stop her from hearing him the night he dragged his mother's deceased body out to the back yard, and she listened to how he shoveled soil, how he grunted and muttered as he buried Ana's body, with no remorse to what he'd done.

He killed his mother without once showing a flash of emotion.

Adrian was senseless, cold — something not human.

Her eyes flickered, and her knees dragged up to her chest as she hugged herself.

Amelie could feel as if something was wrong, but she couldn't quite place her finger upon what. It was a simple feeling, merely that.

She missed Draco a lot today, and she couldn't understand why — she just did.

Her skin was sore from Adrian's vicious hands, and she was almost sure that he had cracked one of her ribs this time. Her eyes were swollen red, and her mouth tasted dry by the blood she'd been coughing up.

Most of all, she was exhausted. Tired to a point where it wasn't manageable to sleep — her eyes blinked quickly, and every time they did, she hoped that they would stay sealed. That she finally would be granted a second of rest, but they never did.

Her lashes battled her blurry vision through the darkness of her room, and she decided to reach for the diary again.

Her diary.

She couldn't feel Draco's gentle hands upon her skin anymore, so reading the kind words, he always wrote her had to make up for the fact that her body hurt in the missing of him.

The longing for him and all that safety he carried shifted overwhelmingly. Amelie missed him so much that it ached, and her heart clenched; a flush of pain scored her vessels.

She wished they'd done more together, learned more about each other, not taken one single minute for granted. She starved to kiss him again, to feel his hands snaking around her waist and the chills down his spine as she stroke the back of his neck.

She thirsted to bathe with him again, to feel the tips of his fingers drag over her back and to guess what he was writing, to feel his skin brush against hers in the heated water, to wash his hair, and to feel his hands massage her scalp as he cleaned hers.

She dreamed of their most intimate night together. How much she realized there and then that he cared for her, it was so much more than closeness to him. He loved her so much it pained him, and that broke her now.

Amelie wished with everything she owned that she'd be given a chance to do it all over again. To cherish and love that blond, stubborn boy back. She'd never fail him or give up on him.

She'd love him just as deeply and intimately as he loved her.

Amelie's feet struck the wooden floor carefully, not to cause any suspicion with Adrian, and she dropped to her knees — her hand grasped underneath her bed as she quietly opened the loosened floorboard, and there it was. Waiting for her, just like she waited for Malfoy.

It was always her waiting for him. It always had been, even when neither of them could help it.

She crawled back up in her bed, hiding her whole self underneath the sheets as she opened the diary. The lights from the hallway outside granted her enough vision to see what he'd been writing her this time.

I love you.

I love you.

Even if Amelie saw those three words in that diary several times a day, every day for three months — she could never grow tired of them.

To her, those words were the one thing that caused her to stay, not to snap and turn as mental as she should've done.

From miles away, he kept her steady.

I will find you.

Amelie knew that he would. Draco would never leave her behind — even if it took time. He'd come for her.

I love you, and I will find you.

'' Please hurry,'' She whispered to herself, within the flesh of her own mouth, '' Please, please hurry.''

I promise.

'' I love you,'' Amelie said again as her veins ached. Her teeth sunk into her bottom lip to muffle any sounds, '' I love you.''

I am coming for you.

I am coming for you, Amelie.

'' Then come for me, please.'' She nearly sobbed out.

I love you.

'' Please, Draco—'' Amelie's throat hurt of how hard she sought not to cry. She couldn't cry because if she did, Adrian would storm in, and hell would be raised all over again.

I love you.

'' I miss you,'' She whimpered, her fingers clenched around the spine of the diary as her eyes squeezed shut.

You are mine.

'' And—'' She swallowed the lump in the back of her throat. Amelie dragged the ends of her sleeves over her knuckles to dry her stained cheeks, '' And you are mine.''

She was mouthing the words now. She didn't dare to speak to them.

Mine.

Amelie's hand hushed the echoing sounds of her own cries. It was heartbreaking not understanding if he knew that she was there all along, reading the words he wrote her.

It hurt so much it was hard to breathe again, and her teeth plunged into the skin of her fingers — to make something else than her heart shatter. Something else needed to hurt before she completely broke down.

Mine.

I'm yours, and you are mine.

I promise.

'' I can't take this for much longer Draco. I'm dying—''

Her heart stopped as she felt the cover she was hiding underneath being thrown off her. The wind swirled around her for a mere second before she could, in all the confusion, look at who stood before her.

Adrian's eyes bored through hers murderously, and if she didn't know any better, she would've believed that he would kill her, right there and then.

His knuckles turned white as he gripped the sheets in his hands as hard as he possibly could before he unexpectedly bent forward, facing the shocked look her features held, and he tore the diary away from her.

Amelie gulped. She didn't know how to react because he caught her red-handed. He trapped her in the act of having the bounded book in her hands and whispering to herself.

Adrian wasn't foolish. He would quickly and without her help — figure out what that diary meant. He'd be furious, more than it.

His eyes snapped over the pages, evilly as he rose a dangerous brow at something he read, '' Malfoy...'' Adrian whispered to himself.

His hand — without notice, wrapped around her throat, and he held her face close to his. He looked as if he could explode out of rage and fury, his skin burning red,

'' Tell me what this is, right now, or I'll fucking kill you.''

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