Title: Eighty-One Days
Author: leeharding123
Chapter: 1/1
Summary: Draco is in the darkness, and that's where he likes it.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
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Draco has spent eighty-one days down there.
Draco quite liked being there, in the dungeon, alone. It was easier somehow, easier than pulling his robes over his head to have darkness, easier to almost see his thoughts, like they were being played on a movie screen in front him, instead of just in his head. He felt it was better to be alone here, the cold prickling his skin in a way that made him feel alive, instead of being outside and crowded and surrounded by people and just fucking numb.
And then he thinks of his mother, like an angel of death, and his father, his goddamn father, with pale lips and pale hair and pale, cold eyes, filled with some kind of crazy confusion.
He replays this thought in his mind- it was their crazed eyes that haunted him, that kept him awake at night. And what they did. Or, what his father did and what his mother let him do. Sell his soul. To their precious fucking Dark Lord, of course. Who else?
Maybe he wasn't replaying the thought. Maybe they were there. He didn't know anymore.
He pushes his finger underneath the cuff around his wrist, his clammy skin reacting to the cold air suddenly reacting with it.
There is a word for what he is feeling now, a word to describe him in chains, remembering the chanting of his father, his own blood on the wall, their eyes, their fucking eyes and Voldemort's red, bloodshot eyes...
Fuck.
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Draco knows it's been ninety-two bloody days down here, not that he's been counting.
Ten hours since he's been fed. It feels like a hundred thousand years.
He lifts his head up slightly, trying to catch the drops of water falling from the ceiling, trying to get them on his parched lips. He doesn't know why he even bothers.
The darkness seems less dark, somehow. Lines of red and white and brown dazzle his eyes and he wonders whether this is real or some kind of insane dream. He can hardly tell the difference anymore. Not hardly. He can't at all.
But it's cold and damp and he can't escape his memories anymore, not here, not where there is nothing but his thoughts to stop him from going insane- or maybe the opposite, he really couldn't care less anymore. All he knew was darkness and black and the opening and shutting of eyes and the incessant dripping of the water, and he let his memories take over like a flash of colour.
There was the school again. He remembered looking at it with new eyes. He should've never gone back. No, he was right to. Or maybe not. But after Snape and the brutal killing and watching Wormtail writhe at his feet he wasn't sure if he really knew what the fuck he was doing anymore. His parents never forgave him for going back to Hogwarts. He had acted like he didn't give a shit. But he did, and it tortured him and he always knew they were going to get him back for it.
Oh, and they did. They got him back so good.
Draco laughs.
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It's been one hundred and thirteen days, and Draco is starting to feel like the walls are closing in on him.
Last night, he woke up sweating and shivering and with a horrible claustrophobic feeling rising in him. He screamed and screamed and screamed until he felt his voice breaking and hands muffling him, hands holding him back and stuffing a gag in his mouth.
He can still hear himself screaming, inside his head. Or maybe he's still screaming out loud.
The place seems colder, the floor harder and the ceiling damper. Draco can feel the grime under his fingernails and he's pretty sure it's not natural for something of that texture to be there.
He tries to stop the incoming flood of vividly coloured memories that blind his eyes almost, but fails miserably. He lets them overcome him, and they are so real he almost feels like he's back there again.
Back where a million eyes follow him at a time. Watching his every step. Whispers haunting his every move. The Boy Who Fucking Lived looking smug, overly smug. And one set of compassionate eyes, one set that stared fixedly, even when he turned and stared straight back.
Hermione fucking Granger.
More than he hated the eyes that taunted him mercilessly, he hated the pity he saw in hers. It made him feel like he needed to be pitied and he didn't, he didn't want that sympathy and consolation and tissues and gentleness. He started to crave being ostracized, being alienated from everyone else because it made him different and it distracted him from those fucking sorry eyes.
He remembers the way she approached him, apprehensively, delicately, like he could be broken. He couldn't be fucking broken. He didn't think it was possible for him to break anymore.
The image of her overwhelms Draco, and he believes he's back again, back where she is standing there, with her bushy hair and scuffed shoes and goddamn eyes. He reaches out, and just as quickly as it came, the memory breaks and he finds himself back in the dungeon, his hair sticking to his forehead in a cold sweat.
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One hundred and thirty-four days Draco's been there, and it's been thirty-two hours and six minutes since he's had something to eat.
He can feel himself wearing away and it's not a nice feeling, the gnawing in his stomach and the dryness in his throat. He tries to speak. He tried, many times. But his voice seems to have disappeared and he wonders whether if he's blind and deaf, or mute. Or all of them.
He didn't think it was going to end like this, here, all alone. He didn't want it to be this way, in the darkness, not sure whether he could walk or talk or function anymore... a vegetable. But did it matter really? He was never going to see daylight again.
All of a sudden he starts to cry uncontrollably, rocking on the spot, shoulders shaking.
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One hundred and thirty-six days, and it feels to Draco even longer since he's eaten.
He knows he doesn't have long to go, and for some reason, it's a relief almost, to escape this darkness and just go somewhere else, anywhere else.
He imagines his lifeless body lying in the grit and grime here, and he shivers.
Draco closes his eyes. He wants to remember, to be put himself back where he felt something and could see things and was just real.
Then a jolting memory of her came back to him, and his hands go clammy and his heart thuds in his chest.
He remembers that night.
He remembers his hands in her hair, her whispered moans, and his lips on hers and Merlin, she had tasted so fucking good, and he could almost taste her on his lips now. He remembers his hands running down the small of her back and his hands on her neck and his hands everywhere, and her hands stroking him and caressing him and leaving his skin on fire everywhere she made contact.
She wasn't perfect with her clothes off, but she was fucking perfect to him, perfect by the way her teeth overlapped and bit her lip, from the perfect curve of her waist to her thighs to what was in between. He remembered pushing himself inside of her, and she was wet and warm and perfect, and he groans out loud at the memory.
Oh fuck, he could still remember her smell and her taste and it tantalised and tortured him. His hands itched to touch and remembering the feel of her skin almost made him choke.
He remembers how the night after, his parents had taken him away.
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Draco has lost count of the days, and he feels nothing but disorientation and confusion and hunger and thirst.
The thought of her on his lips was excruciating. He drifted in and out of a dream.
Then a bright light burst into the room, and Draco shielded his eyes.