I must forfeit my homosexuality.

Draco stares at his bleeding hand and the sentence slashed onto it. It has been written maybe a hundred times now. The pain is blinding, yet will be somehow worth it, and despite how his mind is trying to disconnect from what is surely something he'll talk to a therapist about in the future, he feels it in its entirely.

The pain is real.

I must forfeit my homosexuality.

It's odd, he thinks. The way she speaks about being gay as if it is something one can give up at will. Or... something that someone would want to give up. He thinks that the way that people react to his sexuality is not something to desire, sure, but being gay itself?

It's beautiful. It's not better than being straight, but it's often times harder, and maybe that makes every crush requited all the more worth it.

So if Draco was given the god-honest choice of whether or not he'd forfeit his homosexuality... he knows what he'd choose.

I must forfeit my homosexuality.

She thinks that doing this will convert him. She is, of course, wrong because liking boys cannot be bleed out. Draco wonders, though, why she hates something that has nothing to do with her?

Draco doesn't know. Wants to. He'll think about it later. Everything hurts right now.

I must forfeit my homosexuality.

He wonders what Harry's doing then, at the exact moment his blood stains the floor and 5 more words are etched into the page and his skin. He might be resting. He deserves to. He might be hanging out with the only mildly obnoxious Granger.

Or... he might be thinking about Draco.

Why am I thinking about Harry at a time like this? wonders Draco, as if he doesn't know why already. He has a crush, an infatuation, and it serves at the very least as something to turn to when stressed. If there is any word to describe his situation, it is that.

I must forfeit my homosexuality.

He thinks that after this-- this detention, the letters to his father, and the newspapers paid off to follow-- he'll ask out Harry. It will be a reward to himself, a relief, after all that has occurred and will occur.

If Harry rejects him, a very real possibility, then... then, well, he's alright with that, too. Harry does not owe him anything. His love is not an obligation. But either way, he will not know until he tries. So try he will.

I must forfeit my homosexuality.

Granger had once asked him, when they were together and alone, if he believed in demons.

"I'm not a particularly religious person," he says.

"That's not what I asked."

"What are you referring to, then, if not spiritual demons?"

Granger had then closed the book she was reading and stared at him intensely. He saw then that she carried around enough rage for someone double her years. "There are people, vile in nature, who do bad things for nothing but the sheer pleasure of it, yes?"

He thinks of his father. "Sure."

She thinks of Umbridge. "Then you believe in demons."

He thinks now that perhaps he should've asked her to elaborate, ask what she meant and whether or not it warranted all the furry she directed at it, whether or not he should believe in and be angry at demons, too. But maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe she has enough anger for the both of them.