The muggle house was quiet as they crept through its open windows, left unlocked and ajar to banish the unseasonable heat.
They danced like wraiths, like shadows through the cottage, faceless and safe beneath their flawless white masks. Jeering at the sleeping muggle family like nightmarish jesters, their arms began to jerk and twitch wildly as if they were bloodless puppets suspended from deranged, uncertain strings.
None of this bothered the blonde boy, as he stood back and watched, gray eyes flicking back and forth behind his mask. He watched them sway and move, watched them draw their wands and begin to weave an intricate, strange enchantment over the sleeping muggle couple.
As the spell reached its crescendo, they began to laugh; and Draco, unknowing, laughed as well; This wasn't so bad, even if receiving the dark mark had been unpleasant- no, Draco was feeling fine.
Until suddenly, the others began to wail and scream, descending upon the muggles as if they were ravaged and wild. They made quick work of it, stripping the couple of their bedclothes and laying open their chests with quick knives that flashed in the moonlight.
He stood back, out of the way, still unsure what his brethren were doing. Something wasn't right...
Draco watched his father hunch over the corpse and eat, teeth ripping the tenderwet meat from the man's ribs in long, juicy strips. It was almost as if the mask itself had become his father's face. As his jaw unhinged and stretched, allowing lucius to gag down the lower half of an arm, Draco screamed in agonized, disbelieving horror.
He ran blindly from the room and down the hall, away from his father and the others. His boots stomped against the cottage's carpeted floors, mind so numb with fear that rational thought simply would not register. He flung himself, hysterical, into the first room he could, fingers fumbling desperately with the lock on the doorknob.
As he slid down the door, his breath hitched in frantic, miserable gasps.
His father's grotesquely twisting face seemed burned into Draco's very eyes and he blinked, attempting to banish the vision of the dead man's arm sliding slowly down Lucius' stretched throat, fingers vanishing beyond the pale scape of his father's lips and smooth, white, grinning face.
A hand rose to cover his mouth, suppressing soundless, terrified sobs. I'm not here. This isn't happening. I'm not here. I'm not here. This isn't happening. I am not here.
"Mummy?"
With a click, Draco was bathed in soft golden light-a terrible, ironic contradiction to the ungodly feast going on through out the rest of the cottage. He found himself in a child's room, painted deep blue and littered with muggle toys.
Across from him, a little boy was sitting straight up in his bed, clutching his teddy tightly to his chest in innocent fear.
"Who're you?" the little boy demanded. "Where's my mummy?"
The boy couldn't of been more than five, some shell-shocked part of Draco's mind rationalized. Numbly, it also occurred to him that the little boy did not know that in the next room his parents were long dead and being devoured nearly-whole. He watched the child throw the covers from his small legs and pad towards him across the floor, before stopping to tugging at the doorknob.
With a frown, the little boy unlocked the door.
"Move." the small boy commanded, and Draco did so, unthinking.
As the little boy disappeared out into the dark hallway, Draco closed his eyes and clenched his fists to keep his hands from shaking. He knew what was coming; all he had to do was wait.
Soon, he heard the child scream, heard him running back down the hall. All at once, the door slammed and Draco's ears and eyes were ravaged by the child. "!" the little boy shrieked, his face wet with the automatic downpour of tears that always came when one so little is frightened. "WHATDIDTHEYDOTOTHEM? YOU'RE ONE OF THEM, AREN'T YOU? I'M AFRAID! I WANT MY MUMMY!"
Draco blinked, seizing the child's frail wrists hard, trying his best to still the child as he thrashed and wept.
"Shh. be quiet. You don't want them to hear you. You have to be quiet."
He felt wrong as he whispered the words, wrong as his fingers clenched themselves tighter around the little boy's wrists.
"You're hurting me.." the little boy whimpered, trying fatalistically to pull away from the older boy.
"I'm not going to hurt you." Draco murmured, blinking as the mask slipped down over his face and out of his pale hair. "I'm not going to hurt you at all.."
Saturday
Draco awoke with sunlight in his eyes and the distant ringing of sirens in his ears.
He shifted and groaned, lifting his face from its place upon the floor. His eyes opened and he tore the silver mask from his face, heart beginning to speed in a rising panic as the events of the night before came back to him in washes of crimson recollection. Sitting up, a horrified little noise flew from his mouth when he realized he was completely covered in sticky, coagulated blood. It was in the cracks of his skin, matted in his hair, caked beneath his fingernails.
The thick, rust coloured fluid had soaked through his robes, which clung, crusty and uncomfortably to his body. Glancing around, he realised the entire room was a mess.
It looked as though the walls had been bathed in torrents of blood. The floor was streaked, pooled, stained and most of all, sticky. The innocent muggle toys now looked soiled and dark, almost threatening in the morning light.
All at once, Draco scrambled upward from his place on the floor, face contorting in absolute revulsion when he saw what had been lying on the floor beside him.
It was the little boy.
Or, more accurately, what was left of him.
His small, demolished body was curled fetal, a cold, half eaten carcass lying with its limbs in a broken tangle. His face however, was soft and pale, his cheek resting in the pathetic aftermath of his own red mortality.
Draco stumbled backwards, mouth gaping soundlessly as he beheld what... he had done? His stomach clenched and he spun on his heels, racing from the room and out into the upstairs hall.
It seemed as though the entire second floor of the cottage had borne witness to a nightmarish smattering of blood, bodily fluids and little bits of gore, and the warm morning air carried an overwhelming stench of shit and ensuing decay.
Through the halls and rooms of the unfamiliar house he ran, lost. Where was everyone? The realization came upon him slowly: his father and the others had left him behind.
Searching desperately for a way out, he finally found his exit in the living room: a window had been broken sometime over the course of the night, and with the ever-present sound of Scotland Yard's sirens piercing his ears, he scrambled through the window and ran into the woods, without so much a backward glance.
Judging from the way the sun shone high and blistering in the bright blue sky, it was sometime after noon before he finally allowed himself to relax.
When he had started running, he had been absolutely, blindly hysterical, tears pouring thoughtlessly down his cheeks as he pumped his long legs away from the scene of his crime.
But now he was calm, and furthermore, lost, completely unsure of the direction in which he was traveling. His feet ached in their beautifully tall, uncomfortable boots, ankles often and mercilessly twisted when he misplaced his footing.
When the shrill scream of the sirens died away, he stopped to rest, bathing his hands and face in the cool, clear water of a late summer stream. The blood washed away almost too easily, red wafting lazily through the gently flowing water. When he withdrew his hands they were cold, but clean. No more blood.
As he wandered the forest, miserable and tired, he wasn't quite sure what upset him more: the fact that he had eaten another human being, the fact that he had watched his father eat another human being, or the fact that he had been left behind.
The trees were growing thinner, giving way to smooth green grass.
He came to a clearing and a spark of hope lit inside him. ..yes, this was familiar. He dimly recalled.. oh. please, god.
His pale eyes searched the edge of the clearing and, drawing a breath, he saw what he was looking for. There, nearly hidden, was the path.
Determined, he marched the distance and began the official journey home.
"Here, Harry!"
Fred hovered nearly six feet above the ground, bat in hand. He tossed the tennis ball upward and hit it with a delightfully aggressive smack.
Harry squinted into the sky, watching as the ball sailed away, over the tree tops, and made its descent somewhere within the forest. Ron, who stood behind him, looked up at Harry, hand shielding his eyes from the harsh sun.
"Now you know why i won't play with them. They're cruel, Harry." George, grinning, swooped over and dismounted.
"Sorry, Harry, but you *are* the seeker."
"You aren't really going to make him go get that, are you?" Ron asked, frowning.
"yes," Both the twins answered in unison, grinning. Their idea of cheering harry up was to give him as hard a time as they possibly could. As the dark-haired Gryffindor began to rise upon his broom, Fred pulled him down.
"It'll be easier on foot the problem with flying over a forest is finding a good place to land," he said, and George nodded.
"Once I landed in a tree, had pine needles stuck in my arse for weeks."
Harry smiled and dismounted, handing Ron his broom. "Take my aggression out on them for me, all right?"
"Right." Ron nodded and grinned, and Harry made his way across the lawn and into the forest after the lost tennis ball.
The sun filtered through the trees sweetly, warming his shoulders and the back of his neck with a tender, earthy indifference. It really was nice out, and he tugged at his sweater, pulling it off. Ron (with the twin's assistance, of course) had practically dragged him outside, seizing him forcefully by the elbows and claiming that the sunshine would do him some good.
"Let's have a game of quidditch," they had said, even asking Percy to join in. Harry knew what his friends had really meant... that maybe he would feel better if he came outside and got some air. And, he had to admit, it had worked.
Things were definitely looking up. He would be going back to school tomorrow, and it couldn't possibly get any worse from there, could it?
He smiled to himself. Yes, definitely looking up...
Draco moved down the path, searching desperately for the portkey that would take him back to the moors.
When he had realised that his hellish trek was nearly at its end, he had slowly, but surely begun to grow irritated and impatient, wanting only to find the damned thing and get home.
He wanted.. no, he needed a bath. Draco blinked and started. He could see someone moving through the trees, coming directly toward him, walking in a slouched state of casual oblivion. The someone hadn't seen him. Good.
In a rush, he stepped off the path and into the trees, pressing himself up against the rough bark and hoping to god he wouldn't be spied. Fingers crossed, his eyes squinched shut as he waited for the other to pass.
Harry squinted. He had seen something move, just beyond the periphery of his vision.
He removed his glasses, wiped them and looked again, face drawn in a quizzical frown. As he came closer, he realized it was a person, and he called out, frowning.
"Hey! You, behind the tree! Have you seen our ball?"
Draco flinched and turned his head. He knew that voice.
It was Potter. "Fuck," he murmured, absolutely exasperated.
Harry potter, the boy who lived, was the last person he wanted (or expected, for that matter) to see. He turned his head away and bit his lip, brain whirling wildly. What to do.. What to do.
For an instant, he thought of turning around and saying something, some irrelevant part of his mind thankful that black clothes didn't show blood stains. But just then his eyes fell on the portkey. It was an old tire, lying some 20 yards away. He remembered it.
"Hullo? Miss? ..Have you seen our ball?"
Draco whipped his head around, looking momentarily at Harry, before breaking into a sprint for the portkey.
Harry, confused, took off after him.
It's not that far, he assured himself wildly as he ran. It would be all right as long as Harry didn't see his face. As long as harry didn't see his face, yes.
He could get out of this... closer now... almost there. Draco could hear Harry's slamming footfalls behind him, and wildly he wondered what in bloody hell he was doing. Was harry running... after him ?
Harry was almost close enough to touch the girl by now, and just as he reached to grab the tail end of the blonde stranger's long, black coat the blond took a dive... or did she fall...? and seized hold of the tire.
Harry fell to his knees, out of breath and confused. The blonde was sprawled upon the ground before him, coat askew and half off, legs spread eagle, her strange, heavy boots muddy and black.
It occurred to Harry only as the blond stranger disappeared that the other was firstly, not a girl, and secondly, not muggle.
He stood, breathless, with half a mind to grab the tire and follow the strange blonde, but another sound drew his attention away. It was mrs. weasley, calling him to dinner.