"I still believe in God, but God no longer believes in me."
~Wasteland, by the Mission
His entire world was focused on the candle flame. The spoon hovering above it bubbled as he watched with a calm eye. He had done this before, hundreds of times, mastered the art of balancing the candlestick on a stack of school books on his bed. He dropped a piece of cotton in the spoon, filled the syringe, tested it, and put it down on the green velvet comforter. His left arm was already bare, his belt tight against the upper part of it, the end of the belt in his teeth. It didn't take much time to tap up a vein. A sharp point of pain, and then the rush. An instant rush, the kind charms or potions never created. It was wonderful.
His father would probably disown him if he could see him doing drugs, Muggle drugs at that. He would say,
"A Malfoy has to need of escape. A Malfoy is strong."
Draco was, then, a patch of wood rot on his family tree.
"Good shit, mum, really good shit." Draco managed to mutter before falling over backwards, thanking something he'd put the candle out, or his whole bed would be in flames, and he wouldn't care. Eyes closed, back arched slightly, he couldn't quite brush one question from his mind. It hovered around the edges of his head, making oblivion impossible.
Exactly how had he gotten this bad? (Not that heroin was bad, oh no, heroin was perfect, heroin made everything shiny, happy and good.)
It started summer before first year, when his father had gone crazy. Everyone knew the famous Harry Potter was going to come back to the wizarding world at some point, but the idea never really seemed to hit Lucius until he heard Potter would be starting at Hogwarts just as Draco would. The boy who had caused the fall of the Dark Lord was going to be in the same class as the son of his most faithful follower. So, as to prepare him, Draco had been put through a summer of relative hell. "Training" his father called it, and it left Draco feeling rather like a rung-out rag. Curses and poisons and trips down Knockturn Alley should have made him happy. Lucius was finally treating Draco like he was grown up, sharing snippets of plans, teaching him how to best trim exotic and deadly plants. All it did, though, was make Draco more unhappy then he already was. After the novelty wore off, Draco began to see the holes in the promises made by his father. He had his pride as a pureblood, that was true, and he agreed that magic needed to stay in magical families, but the point of actually killing Muggles was lost on him. If he was in charge, he would simply isolate the wizarding world further. All the underhanded pseudo-evil was dashing in storybooks, but in reality, it just seemed cowardly.
The true problem for Draco lay in the few acts of outright aggression he saw his father succumb to. Draco was a bitter, angry boy for reasons even he couldn't comprehend, and the venue to mindlessly lash out was a huge temptation. It was, however, a temptation that also made Draco sick. Thanks to his stoic upbringing, Draco rarely allowed himself to attack others in blind anger. Rather, he bottled it and cooled it, making it last longer, its sting harsher. His was almost always a carefully planned attack. He learned at a young age that to show emotions was weak. That was why he beat himself up inside more then his father ever could. Draco silently agreed with everything Potter and the other Gryffindors said and thought about him. Who was he kidding? The whole school thought the same about him. Lucius Malfoy's bratty son. He was weak, he was useless, the only things he had were bribed for him by his father. There was no point in his existence at all, he was nothing. Nothing.
Until he discovered opiates.
He hadn't been expecting the first taste of morphine, there was just something odd about his juice one evening, and when he looked at his mother, she gave him that sad look she always did, nodded at the juice and turned to talk to Father. That was how Draco made it through that last summer before Hogwarts. School was blessedly far away from Lucius and his little plans and impromptu classes in Muggle torture. He forgot about needing morphine that school year, but when summer came, he still had to go home, still had to face his father.
Draco managed it well, those summers at home. His mother, who had always been a sad, ghost-like presence in his young life, became his silent provider of liquid escape. It was a fluidly moving plan, like clockwork. That all changed after Fourth Year, when Lord Voldemort came back.
Draco came home from Hogwarts to a house full of excited Death Eaters. His father was in rare form, and for the first time Draco was dragged along as his father caused petty chaos in the Muggle world, always in masks, always at night. Lucius started demanding perfection, drilling Draco in harder curses, always reminding him that when Draco graduated from Hogwarts he would be sworn over to the Dark Lord, and he couldn't make a single mistake in front of Lord Voldemort or risk losing the Malfoy's place in the hierarchy.
The pure pressure caused Draco's morphine intake to rocket up, from a mixed glass at night, to a mixed glass at every meal, and sometimes more. One rainy evening he was left blessedly alone in the house with his mother, while his father and friends were off doing something mysterious. Narcissa had shown him how to cook up a shot of heroin that night. That was the start of his real downward spiral. Draco would never have called himself addicted to morphine, it was just handy. Heroin addicted him. Heroin became his goddess. By the time fifth year started, there was no way Draco could manage without it. For the first time, he took his drug use to school with him. He was very careful at the beginning, only shooting up when he was alone in his dorm room, but slowly as the first weeks dragged on, he stopped caring if someone else was in the room, his gear always on him. That was a bad idea in general. He could be expelled for just having gear, and he would be expelled if he was caught with the heroin itself, but he didn't care. His grades were slowly dropping, he'd totally abandoned Crabbe and Goyle, who could barely get to class without him, he stopped eating. His hair, normally so tidy, so sleek, hung in his face, knotted. He'd forgotten to get it cut over the summer, it was really too long. His skin should have been a nice glowing pale, but it had sunk into a dull pallor. His eyes were always shadowed, the bags under them darker by the day. His robes, despite the best efforts of the house elves, were constantly crumpled. On the whole, he looked like a totally different boy. He was a totally different boy.
Snape, he knew, suspected something along the line of drugs, and if Snape suspected, Dumbledore knew. Snape had tried to corner him more then once, after class, in the halls, always offering to "talk". Draco sat up, gritting his teeth. He didn't need Snape's pity, or his concern. He, after all, didn't concern himself with much more then when his next owl from his mother would be getting in, and where she would tuck the heroin in this time. Life was a simple thing when you're addicted to heroin.
Draco was putting his gear away when the door to the dorm opened. It was Goyle, blundering, stupid Goyle, looking abashed, eyes locked on his hands, which were clasped in front of him.
"Hey Draco."
"Yeah, Goyle?"
"Are you mad at us? At me and Crabbe?"
Draco was almost touched by the worry in Goyle's voice. Rather, he would have been touched if he hadn't been sickened.
"Why would I be?"
"Well, you know, you haven't been talking to us, and you're not making fun of those Gryffindors like you always do. The others, they think you've gone crazy. Quidditch is starting soon, and you haven't even gotten your broom out and we all thought..." There was a long pause and Goyle stared at his feet, "We thought that you'd be captain."
Draco frowned. He hadn't been making fun of Potter and Weasley? He hadn't noticed. The others, Draco knew, meant the rest of his house. They thought he was crazy? Why in the world would he want to be Quidditch captain? Why would he want to play Quidditch in the first place?
"Right. Well, I'm not mad at you. I'll work on that Gryffindor thing, and that Quidditch thing." His voiced sounded falsely cheerful to his own ears.
Goyle seemed relieved. "I knew you weren't crazy. You're a Malfoy."
Draco nodded, eyes clouding, wanting to inform Goyle of the long line of totally insane Malfoys, which included his father. Something made Draco think Goyle wouldn't quite understand that, though, so he didn't say anything. Squinting at the window and then back at Goyle, he brushed his hair out of his face, almost absentmindedly, and stood. "Since I'm awake, want to walk with me to breakfast?"