It stains his fingertips black.
He supposes it's only logical.
Thinking about the past is painful, but still it draws him in, inescapable, something inevitable that he can either face or run away. And Draco is so, so tired of running.
There's no one left to blame. He could say that it was all deception, coercion, torture, but in the end, they're all just backdrops in his mind. His choices are all his own, the deaths are all his fault, and there's nowhere left to hide.
There hasn't been for a while now.
Draco presses the quill to his finger, savouring the bite of the tip against his skin.
Pain always brings him back when he thinks too hard.
Brings him back, or takes him away? He doesn't know what's real anymore, and it terrifies him.
There's the world in which he sits alone in the library, the sky black beyond the windows, the world in which he's trapped within himself, slowly withering from the inside out. There's the world in which he's a failure, a fool, a traitor, a coward, blind and stumbling in the dark, things brushing against him, the fear rising inside him. There's the world he used to know, full of laughter and happiness and delicate things, spun sugar and stained glass, beautiful and brittle.
He looks down at the quill, thin rivulets of dark ink trailing down his hand. It's a pale reflection of the coiled serpent ashy against his forearm, tendrils of black seeping into his skin.
He appreciates the irony; his blood is no longer pure.
Slowly, deliberately, Draco puts the quill to the parchment.
Worlds.
They all connect here, inside him.
So many realities.
Another one won't hurt.
He starts to write, his pain flowing onto the parchment before him, and the library is silent except for the faint scratching of his quill.
He writes and writes until he has no more words left, until he's constructed a new world. He writes himself a new existence, makes himself the way he should have been. A perfect Draco for a perfect reality.
For the first time in a long time, he doesn't think. He loses himself, his cursive script filling the parchment as the thoughts leave his head.
There's a faint whisper of sound, and it's almost as if time has slowed, turning to treacle in the air between him and the figure silhouetted against the doorway. The light is painfully bright, but then the boy shuts the door behind him and walks across the library, his footsteps almost silent.
Potter looks at Draco, his head tipped slightly to one side, considering. Slowly, the other boy pulls out a chair, the grating sound jarring in the silence. He sits down.
Draco does not know what to do.
So he keeps writing.