AN I don't own HP or any of the characters! Written for the International Wizarding School Championship Round 6!

Story Title: Grey and Green

School: Mahoutokoro

Theme: Avada Kedavra

Main Prompt: [Setting] Azkaban

Other Prompts: [Creature] Dementor

Year: 4

Word Count: 2638

Ash. Everywhere he looked, no matter what he did, there was ash. It floated all around him like snowflakes, but it looked so familiar… Like the ash during the final battle. Perhaps it was the same ash—some sick sort of revenge fantasy played out by the Minister—or perhaps it was modeled after it. Maybe Draco had made it up himself, as a way to torture his own mind in the face of boredom.

He stared at it, watching the little tufts swirl around him on the floor. Everything was cold. It was the kind of cold that infected the body like a disease and buried itself in every crevice of bone or drop of blood it could find. Draco had always admired the cold and how it fit so well with the greyscale color scheme. One would think that Azkaban, being the demonic hell it was, would have been awash with dark crimsons or even blacks—but no, everything was grey. Even his own eyes were grey now.

Lucius Malfoy sat chained inside the cell a mere ten feet from him. Draco could see him easily through the bars, and he could see the emptiness in his father's expression, but that was nothing new. His eyes barely paused, now, over the ghost his father had become. Instead, his focus was on the cell between them and the body that lay inside.

Narcissa Malfoy was still warm. It was appalling—the number of creatures that managed to survive within those charcoal walls—but rats were now chewing through and burrowing into her body for warmth. Draco had been watching them for over an hour with a mix of disgust and jealousy. On one hand, that was his mother's body on the floor, freshly dead, and his entire body shuddered at the thought of life without her. On the other, though… The darker, twisted side of him that had been forged in that place reared its ugly head and he had to wonder what it felt like to gorge yourself on meat, or hide in the kind of warmth that the air itself sucked out of you. He was slightly jealous, though that in itself disturbed him.

Draco wasn't sure what qualified as "normal" mourning, really, but he could guess that he was not a prime example of it. His father seemed more attune with societal expectations, even in here, and had sobbed for over twenty minutes before reducing himself to a huddle on the floor. He'd tried to speak and reassure Draco, but the younger would hear none of it.

Nothing he said would bring her back. Lucius could sob and grieve and scream about love all he wanted, but that wouldn't change the fact that he'd been cruel while she was alive. The man hated her—and made it clear—because she'd been placed in a dilemma. Locked between them, she'd been able to share her warmth with one of them through the bars—but not both—and she'd chosen Draco time and time again. As the months dragged on, his father became less understanding of that choice.

Which was why Narcissa Malfoy—or, dare he say it, Narcissa Black—was lying dead on the stone floor in a puddle of something orange-colored. Even that was grey, though. Her skin was ashen now, and Draco could already see flecks detaching and joining the ash piles, like little pieces of dandruff. The rats didn't help, of course, but the cold made it a hundred times worse. Draco had loved the cold before this place.

As much as he hated to admit it, Draco knew Azkaban better than he knew his own family's manor and he knew every sound it made. From the clicking of rat feet to the different kinds of wind, he knew it all. Lucius still jumped at any noise. Pathetic. Draco was twenty-four now, but he still marveled at the way the dampness of the walls managed to crawl into his skin and stick. It festered and grew like a mold, and he felt the same sort of infection spreading as he stared at his mother.

No, he corrected himself, his mother's body.

He heard the telltale whoosh of air, he felt the instant temperature drop, but he couldn't bring himself to hide. There was no point in even trying. Tattoos littered his skin now and he couldn't really remember when or how he'd gotten them, but the steely greys mixed well with his surroundings, like his own skin was becoming a sort of camouflage. The dementors always found him, though, no matter what he did.

He heard it again, feeling the familiar prickle on the back of his neck that said he was being watched. It didn't feel right, though. His energy was practically nonexistent and he would have laughed at the prospect of trying to walk around, but a strange sort of sound was luring him in. A slow, gentle sort of rhythm.

Draco paused. Nothing in this place was ever gentle or slow, at least not in a way that felt distinctly non-threatening. Was this how the madness started? Already, he'd begun to lose faith in his senses and his perception, but was this the first sign of his mind actually going? There wasn't much of a point left to trying to survive anymore, though.

"Malfoy?" He jolted, muscles seizing so fast it felt like whiplash. That voice… He knew that voice and yet it sounded so human it couldn't be here—it couldn't. Even his mother's voice, the one he'd grown up surrounded by, didn't sound quite human inside these walls. The grey did something to the sound.

"Malfoy, what the—?" But the voice didn't finish the sentence because Draco had willed himself to look up. Everything was grey. The walls were such a mottled shade of silver that it hurt. Any light that managed to fight its way in was distorted and scattered, resulting in a smoky sort of mist that was half dust, half shadow. Everything it touched turned grey, even the blood now pooling around his mother's head. It should have been red. The kind of bright, brilliant scarlet that screamed of life and showed that something had been lost in her death. Instead, it was just another sickly shade of grey. Grey, grey, grey, grey… But, suddenly, Draco was staring into the purest shade of green he'd ever seen.

"Har...ry?" His voice cracked and scraped against the air but it was audible. Harry whipped around. It didn't occur to him that the man was Potter, never Harry, until he saw the shock written into the Gryffindor's face. No, not Gryffindor anymore. Just Ha—Potter.

"Draco? What are you… You weren't supposed to be…" The emerald faltered, though, and Draco followed his gaze to the body lying in front of him. Harry was standing there, in Narcissa Malfoy's cell, with half his body seemingly gone and the other half trembling. Even if Harry was some kind of hallucination, Draco could see the remorse in his face—ever the bleeding heart, even in Azkaban.

"She saved my life. I came to pay my respects… I'm sorry I couldn't do more for her, but you," Harry turned on him, eyes suddenly full of something. "You were never supposed to be here." Before either could question or elaborate on that point, though, they were cut off by a dread-inducing hiss. Dementors.

Was it May already? Draco couldn't remember because time didn't really work the same way when it was warped with all that grey… But, from the paleness of his father's face, he could guess that the elder's time had finally run out. Just as Harry began to disappear, though, a bony white hand snatched the invisibility away from the Gryffindor and Lucius quickly disappeared. Even through the bars, Draco could see the panic on Harry's face.

The hissing was getting closer, but Draco couldn't manage even the slightest bit of fear in reaction to it. They were coming for Lucius. Though insolent at times, the dementors would never disobey a direct order like the Kiss and they wouldn't come for anyone else—just Lucius. Harry was safe, though he didn't seem to realize that, and Draco was sure that he was too, until…

The dementors were gathering in his cell. Why, though? He wasn't in line for the Kiss and they could drain him all they wanted but it didn't take chains or hoards to do it. One hissed in disgust, and then it hit him. They thought he was Lucius. Some part of him swore in recognition of the fact that he was going to die, now, but the larger part couldn't react. He just couldn't care. The cold, empty grey that had surrounded him for years pulsed into his body and he was going to surrender to it—he really was—until he heard a scream.

A bright, blinding white light overwhelmed his senses. He blinked back tears enough to see some kind of four legged shape, but then the dementors were fleeing and the light was surrounding him. Honestly, he hadn't eaten in days and he was not prepared for something like this to happen. His senses screamed in protest at the light, and the noise, and the sudden movement of everything around him but he grabbed at his hair in an attempt to stay conscious. Harry was in Lucius' cell.

Draco blinked and his father was back, cowering and sobbing in the corner like a pathetic little rat. He blinked again—Merlin, how did everything keep happening so fast? The four legged thing was fading, crumbling under the sudden influx of dementors that sucked at its body, but, before Draco could even comprehend what it was, it was gone. The dementors were back and he might have felt a sliver of fear if Harry hadn't also reappeared.

Just for a second, Draco was sure that they would all die. No one ever tricked dementors or escaped them, not even the great Harry Potter, and he knew that this was the end, just because he happened to resemble his father. But then, in the blink of an eye—or maybe two—Draco was warm. There was a sheet over his head and Harry was scrambling down onto the stone beside him but the only thing Draco's mind could register was the warmth.

Merlin, Harry was touching him. Draco didn't understand half of what was happening or why a magic sheet would protect them, but suddenly, Harry had pulled him into his lap and was squeezing. They barely fit under the sheet, even with Harry practically crushing him, but Draco was gone. He hadn't been warm in years. It burned like fire against his skin because he was so used to the cold and the damp that suffocated Azkaban, but he loved it.

The touch was killing him. It felt like his mother's arms around his body, winding through the bars to share body heat, and it felt like the Dark Lord's awkward embrace. Home and Hell, all in one, but he couldn't get away from it. He didn't want to get away from it.

"Shut up!" Harry's voice couldn't even snap him back to reality, it seemed. The former Gryffindor clamped a hand over his mouth but Draco couldn't stop now. He was crying, he realized. It felt weird and foreign because he hadn't cried since first coming to Azkaban but the floodgates were open.

Harry swore above him, drawing the attention of a couple dementors, but quickly stilled them both under the sheet. A wand lay on the cold stone, a foot or two away. Was that why Harry was swearing? Draco hadn't seen a wand in so long that it was starting to look like a bone, maybe, or even a limb. But he knew enough to realize that that was Harry's escape plan.

Trapped, they sat there under the magic sheet that apparently, for some reason, actually worked. Draco was sobbing now, but Harry's hand managed to muffle the sound enough. Maybe it was the contact, or maybe it was the fact that Draco felt more alive than he ever had in his life, but he couldn't stop the flood of emotion that Harry's touch had started.

"Shh!" He couldn't, though. Even as they sat—still as stone—and watched the dementors search, he couldn't stop. The magic sheet worked, though, because the dementors turned back to Lucius' cell and floated back to him. It all happened in flashes. One minute, Lucius was screaming, then he was silent. One minute, he was alive and flailing, the next, he was as dead. Draco watched him crumble like someone might watch a picture of a tragedy in some far off place—disinterested, detached, and only vaguely upset. It hit him, then, though.

His mother was dead. He knew that because he'd been watching rats eat her body for hours now, but it finally clicked. His father was dead, too—though he wasn't as sad about that one. Draco wouldn't miss his father, but it suddenly all just came together in his head and he realized: he was completely alone now. He'd just watched both his parents die in less than a day, and he was just… alone.

He couldn't stop shaking. No matter what Harry did—from the hand over his mouth, to the iron grip on his waist—Draco couldn't stop because he was so, utterly alone. The warmth and the smell of another human being so close to him was too much. He would never have this again. Everyone was gone. From Dumbledore to his parents, from Blaise to the bloody Gryffindors—they were all gone, dead, and he was just… there.

Draco couldn't breathe. He was shaking so hard in Harry's arms that their shoes were colliding with a steady thump, thump, thump. With Lucius dead, the dementors were turning back to them. Nothing Harry did seemed to help the sound, between Draco's chattering teeth and trembling limbs, but neither of them knew what to do. Draco knew it wasn't right to keep Harry there. The second the man got his wand, though, he knew that his last human connection would be permanently over and he couldn't take that thought.

He couldn't do it. Harry was panicking as the dementors drew closer and began to feed on them, but Draco couldn't let go. It seemed like their fates were sealed, but then Harry was cursing again and throwing himself across the floor in a desperate grab for his wand.

He missed.

Draco tried to let go and let the man escape but he couldn't make himself release. He needed someone—something—to hold him together because he still couldn't breathe and it felt like the panic was going to drown him in his own body. Harry lurched again, grabbing for the stick of wood. The dementors were on them now, fully aware of their presence but confused by the invisibility, and Harry was stretching, reaching, trying so hard to just—

Draco felt the familiar twisting sensation of apparating. Harry was taking him with—whether he meant to or not—and the dementors couldn't follow. They couldn't, right? He opened his eyes just long enough to catch a glimpse of what looked like a bedroom before the adrenaline finally ran out. All at once, he collapsed. Between Harry's arms, still gripping him tight, and the smell of anything that wasn't dead or rotting, Draco felt like he'd just been apparated straight into heaven.

Just one glimpse, but he already knew. There were reds, and blues, and whites, and purples, and Merlin, there was the piercing emerald green of those eyes—but there was no grey. No ash, no cold, no grey. Draco could have been permanently apparated inside of a rainbow and he wouldn't have cared as long as that bloody grey didn't ever come back. No grey now… Just a beautiful emerald green.

Thanks so much for reading! Please review! It means the world to me, honestly.