Disclaimer: All recognisable characters and settings are not mine.
Cold, and the end was something unknown, unreachable in the slow recesses of his brain.
An awareness that no one could quite process; it kept on and on and on, unhalting and strong until the dark swallowed it.
Thick and fluid, the shadows surrounded, threatened to even swallow them whole, engulfing and forming new shapes to fit the mouths and earpieces of despair. It was a shallow, slurred and hopeful, despite the suffocating surrounds, and it provided an appropriate setting for what was to come.
Draco never told Astoria what he did on those nights away. She always assumed he was taking a mistress or a slattern from the likes of Knockturn Alley, he never corrected her otherwise. Perhaps, in a way, he was – a Madam named Solitude who provided him with his regular whores, his Desperation, his Anger, his Resignation, his Self-hatred. Sometimes they would come to him, instead of the other way around, and he would eagerly embrace what they could give to purge Draco of what he was.
In the dark of night, he took these women to bed with him. In dark, dank inns where hopefully no one would remember the shock of platinum blond hair – his wife, child needn't know the solaces he craved from the whores. He never partook in the drunks' activities on these nights, hoping that the sobriety of his brain would help the process along.
Shadows were enough to swallow him up, to erase what was in the past – what haunted him as seen in the creases of his forehead and sharpness of his face. Maybe it was a madness, made incurable by the spotlight, insufferable reporters who fed off any whisper, hatred from those whom he had once hated. Despite years of rebuilding his facade, Draco was still lost, still a victim of the segregation of blood, a pain soothed by his whores.
His wallet fed them; first only every six months, then once a month, once a fortnight, once a week. With increasing regularity, he shrunk away from his connections. Slowly but surely his self-medication, self-deprivation was working, cutting his mind away from the body and life he despised. His wife began to notice his emotional withdrawal, the subtle but alarming changes in his features, the stance, the mannerisms, the pieces of his mind that he left behind in those inns. When he was home at all, that was. He hardly seemed to care – hardly seemed human at all.
Your child, she deplored, he barely knows you. The people, they are talking. Please, Draco, for chrissakes, come back. For me. For him.
Maybe what he felt for the woman was sympathy. He didn't know anymore. All he knew was his whores – his way out of this mess. His escape, found in the shadowy, grimy rooms. His solaces.
And the darkness swallowed.
My first published fic. Unbeta-ed. Thank you for reading.