Author's Note: First fan fic in awhile, so be gentle and enjoy. I thought of this concept over a year ago, but never got around to finishing it. Positive feedback is a friend. 'Disarm' comes from a Smashing Pumpkins song…don't ask lol... I'm not sure where I'm going with this but I'll set this as 'complete' unless otherwise inspired. Happy reading!
It was a curious thing, these visits. He would slip in after midnight, provide a scrap of food here or a goblet of water there, and they'd sit watching the orange light his wand would ricochet off the barren walls of the basement. Draco thought of the countless times he passed her in school corridors—his expected sneers and her unperturbed gazes appeared in his mind. Advancing like an unwanted stream of flashing memories, he knew in the real world—their Hogwarts world—deliberate interaction between the two of them would never happen under any normal circumstance. Maybe that's what prompted him to approach her in the first place.
He remembered clear as ever the night she came here. He wanted to laugh in bitter chortles at how casual he made her arrival sound—as if it was on her own accord…as if she willingly wandered in through the front door out of pure impulse. Well, if there wasn't clearly a war outside the confines of the manor's structure, he normally wouldn't put the whole ambling-casually-in thing past her. Besides, it wasn't a complete lie, he mused, for she was not completely dragged like the others; aside from the blows from Bellatrix, a formality of some sorts, there was barely a scratch on her. The silent strength and dormant hope in her eyes annoyed and revolted her captors, but she was no value other than a weight on her father's conscious and an ally of the enemy. She was no true good to them further bloodied or bruised, and if Bellatrix wanted a blood-traitor to continue to smack around, there were plenty more where that came from.
Aside from her severely perplexingly resilience that allowed her to retain her natural animated composure, the most intriguing thing was that although she stood for everything he defied and her loved ones were everyone he fought against, when it was just the two of them (Ollivander was usually lulled in and out of unconsciousness, so he hardly counted as company), all previous association dissolved. She was simply a girl caught in the riptide of a war, and he was a boy silently scared out of his wits. There was nothing and everything that could've been said in each breath, each moment between the two. But for the first few days he barely said a word and she merely looked at him curiously.
He'll never admit to knowing exactly why he willingly ventured to visit her. He could've spared himself since she herself was an immediate source of guilt, yet instead he found himself crouching right next to her. As he made no move to leave her either, they continued to sit with their backs against the ancient, stale walls and their legs bent to accommodate the lack of space. From time to time, busied footsteps from the world above them would strike the room in reverberating quakes and trickle specks of wood dust from the ceiling. When a single ripple inside the cup he had initially clenched with his fingers reflected off the light at the end of his wand, he remembered his purpose in being here in the first place. He nudged the goblet toward her once, but as her probing orbs merely gleamed with calm interest after a single sip, it was evident all sources of distress—the war, its toll, and even thirst—lay forgotten at their feet like the cup itself. He did not even recall his grip on the brim slackening itself. His infamous smirk and her peculiar ramblings seemed to be left at the cellar door for the first day or two. There was nothing to be said, so there they sat in silence.
The initial quiet eventually dissolved into something else entirely. Draco does recall smiling—or what you may have passed as smiling at that time—maybe some laughter behind their tragic circumstance, but the memories themselves seem so far away now…that part of him so distant. For her blunt manner, she was surprisingly keen on keeping topics away from the obvious. However, he does remember awkward pauses when conversation drifted to tense territory—to reality— and he remembers a brief time of his brimming anger when she once pointedly mentioned that his destiny could be his own if he let it, but he, as he would rather have it, remembers her smile. Once there was a bit of food snuck her way, the remnants of her 'normal' self drifted back to her; in a shameful, private thought he almost regretted supplying her at all once the matter-of-fact stories of Crumpled-Who's-A-What's-It's or flying purple hippos or whatever else she babbled about filled the dim cellar walls. Regardless, he somehow tried his best to prevent the instincts of an insult escape past his lips and never once did he make an inward slur he meant. Well, maybe once…but nobody counted but him.
He remembers crying on the eve of the fortnight of her stay. He still could not bring himself to bloodshed and his barely composed façade crumbled at her touch. She cradled his head and stroked his hair and the tears just flowed. He felt a bit ashamed afterwards; she's the prisoner after all, and here he was in his own house. He'd never even seen her break—the beautiful blank was apparently poised as ever, even when he mechanically snapped or sneered.
Out of all the secretly coveted conversations past many midnights in that basement, he vowed he'll always remember the way the light of his wand illuminated her dark trusses of tussled blonde hair, but he knows he'll truly never forget the way she looked the night of the end of the world. He caught glimpses of her dueling and heard bits of her incantations. For a brief moment in time, it was as if his personal demons and outward offenses paused. Her locks wisped back with her every movement and her silvery eyes shown in the candlelight of corridors—their makeshift battleground. Out of it all, it was her eyes that got to him the most. He envied the pure, simple, and brave acceptance of her surroundings that swam throughout her vision; not a flicker of fear was evident, for she knew what and who she stood for and that alone kept her going.
When the world didn't end—well, depending on whom you asked—he saw her once more. After numbly escaping the desperate clutches of his mother, he watched Luna hug the survivors and he saw a humbled admiration the heroes held for her. She'd go on to live her life and he'd try to pick up what was left of his—rebuilding, repenting, denying. In the back of his mind he knew, despite her being on the other side, despite their paths never meaning to cross again, despite where their lives had led them, that pieces of them once were and forever shall be the way they were those evenings in his manor. Hidden together from the reality just outside the reaches of that wooden door, he was just a boy and she a girl, and nothing more was expected.
He could sugarcoat his initial reasons for checking on her the night she came to be captive in his home. He could brush it off, saying it was mere curiosity, but he knows something other than the guilt and terror pitted in his stomach existed in those fragile times of war. For behind his matured face that now tucks away the burdens of those adolescent years, he knows he will continue to question how many other turns their lives could've taken and what other life he truly could've lived.
A part of him will always be that seventeen year old boy with the mangled destiny and hidden weakness. And that part of him will always wonder.
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