Title:Blue
Author:TinaMustDie
Wrote this forever ago and finally got off my lazy arse to post it. Hope it's snazzy.
It's been six hours. Six hours since he got the floo. Six hours since the aurors told him that her therapists had already identified the body. Six hours. And he can't sit there anymore.
Draco stands, gray eyes empty like they've never been before. Because before, there was always something to drive him. There was hate and there was victory and anger. But never has he felt empty. And it's too foreign to deal with right now, so he's got to move.
He strolls out of the manor gates, black and twisting and so bloody stereotypical, and apparates two or three times. Random places flash by, and he doesn't really care who sees him, or how much trouble he'll be in later, because that nearly unbearable squeeze is a feeling, and he needs something.
When he stops, he's not surprised. It's the docks where she would take him as a child. They used to stand here and watch the sun go down, then race to get home before Lucius finished work and found the manor empty. This is where she was standing mere hours ago. Maybe if he stands here, they're connected somehow through time and space. But he can't feel anything, so he knows they're out of sync.
The sun is setting now, and he thinks maybe she killed herself while it was rising so that he would come and watch it set. It's kind of a beautiful thought, so he holds onto it.
It's a blue sunset. He wonders what color the sunrise was. He hopes it was blue too. This way they match. Narcissa loved blue.
He hates it now.
It's been six days. Six days and ten hours. He's keeping meticulous count. And he's still empty. He really hates her for it. It's a mild kind of hate, just out of reach, but he can wait. He can't stay cold forever.
Lucius is in Azkaban and probably doesn't care. He has his own demons to deal with. Draco thinks that if they ever send him to Azkaban, all he'll see is blue.
Sixteen days and nine hours and thirty-two minutes. He wishes he'd stop counting. But something masochistic in him wants to know. So Draco counts and watches the sun.
Sixty days and ten hours and fourteen minutes. He's at her funeral. Draco looks around and wonders how many people here actually care. He thinks it might be just him. But then he spots Andromeda and he is glad somebody decent loved his mother. It assures him that she wasn't all bad.
When Pansy Parkinson starts to cry, a rush of emotions he's not ready for flood his senses. He is filled to the brim with hate for the girl and her crocodile tears. And suddenly, he has to leave, because he can't sit still.
The sky is gray, and he's grateful, because he can't handle blue. He walks slowly, so he can feel just how cold it is, and maybe numb the turmoil in his chest. It's the worst kind of irony when he wishes he could go back to being empty.
Sixty-two days and three hours and sixteen minutes. The sky is still gray, and he's still a mess, and he's hoping Lucius hurts just as much as he does. He's tangled up in his bed sheets and the window is open. It's disappointing when he doesn't freeze to death in his sleep.
Sixty-four days and ten hours and twenty-nine minutes. He's wandering around some muggle town, alone and tired, and wonders if this is what going crazy feels like. Did his mother ever feel like this? He hopes not. He hopes it was completely different, and that he's not turning into her.
He hears laughter and the chaos of a crowd, and his curiosity is a welcome relief from his depression. Lights are flashing, music is playing, the odor of fried food wafts through the air. It's a carnival.
He doesn't remember buying tickets or walking to this spot, but he's here. In front of him is a large contraption that looks kind of like a mechanical spider. He briefly wonders what it does, before stepping through the flimsy metal gate and onto a seat. A muggle man directs him to secure a metal bar across his torso and he likes the snap it makes as it closes.
He doesn't have to wait long, because the muggle steps back behind the gate and presses some buttons, and dear God, isn't this nice? The spider-like machine whirs to life and slowly starts to spin. It's arms are turning slowly, and his chair is rotating, and lights are blinking. The thing starts to pick up speed and Draco feels as if his stomach is being compressed, and his lungs are being shoved into his back. It spins faster and it's getting hard to breathe, and he kind of hopes it makes him sick. The lights are still flashing and twirling, his torso still feeling like it's going to implode.
And then it slows, and comes to a stop. He wants to go again, but he's feeling rather detached right now, and the sun's about to go down.
When he reaches the docks, it's too cloudy to see the sunset, but he doesn't feel like it's a reprieve. He stays for hours, until he's sure it's gone.
Sixty-seven days and five hours and forty-two minutes. He's going back to Hogwarts tomorrow. Yesterday he spent the night at the docks and stayed till sunrise today.
He's thin, Draco notes while standing in front of the mirror in the hall. He took all the mirrors out of his bedroom, because he kept thinking he was catching glimpses of Lucius. He's going mad just fine on his own, and doesn't need the reinforcement of optical illusions.
So he's standing here and cursing genetics, because he doesn't look anything like her. He used to be so proud, being the spitting image of his father. Now he just wishes he could see her face. It's kind of ridiculous, but insanity knows no limits. He wonders why he wants so badly to be ill.
Sixty-eight days and seven hours and thirteen minutes. The looks he's been getting all day are unnerving him, but it's only when he crosses the golden trio that he realizes something must be different. Potter stares, Weasley doesn't seem to realize his mouth is hanging open, and Granger's giving him that look. Pity is etched in her features. He hates her, he hates her so much.
He can't remember if he's talking about Granger or his mother.
Sixty-nine days and four hours and twenty-six minutes. Potions class feels like a prison cell. He's sitting by himself because Zabini has the flu, and he's glad because he probably would have strangled Parkinson. He remembers those fake wails and intends to make her pay for them. She's looking at him, and so is everybody else. Thankfully Snape runs his classroom with an iron fist. They can't gossip but Draco can tell they want to.
But all thoughts of murder are driven from his mind when Longbottom accidentally tips his cauldron. The purple liquid is burning fiercely, but he doesn't scream. Snape hustles him out of the classroom and into the hall, moving with a panicked air. He follows and doesn't say a word.
Madam Pomfrey seems greatly distressed at his condition. She has his shirt off and is working magic he doesn't pay attention to, while Snape bustles around mixing different potions. The thought of Snape bustling, because that's really the only word to describe it, brings a smile to his face. He hears a hoarse laugh and it takes a few minutes to realize it was his.
The procedure takes three hours. He is awake for all of it.
Seventy days and eight hours and nineteen minutes. Snape arrived a few minutes ago. He's having a whispered discussion with Madam Pomfrey and Draco wishes they would speak up, because all anyone ever seems to do around him anymore is whisper. He still hasn't seen himself yet. Pomfrey gave him a sleepless dream potion after patching him up yesterday. He woke up this morning with bandages wrapped tightly around his arms, legs, stomach, hands, feet. He wonders if he's hideous. He finds he doesn't really care.
Finally, they finish their conversation, and while Pomfrey enters her office, Snape walks his way with a hand held mirror and a frown.
"Do you have any idea how worried I've been?" Snape hisses as he takes a seat at Draco's bedside. "First I hear Narcissa is having trouble, then she leaves you all alone, then you ignore the Dark Lord's summons, and turn up to your sixth year looking half out of your mind! What the hell is going on?"
He doesn't remember getting a summons. He tells Snape this.
"You don't remember? Are you insane? The Dark Lord sent for you to be initiated! You were to receive the dark mark before school started!"
Draco wonders how Snape can be this pissed and not alert Madam Pomfrey.
"Draco, I'm surprised he hasn't killed you for this!"
He's surprised too. He can't believe that he forgot about the Death Eaters.
"You know, I really like the tile in here." He hides a smirk.
Snape sighs and hands him the mirror.
Seventy-one days and nine hours and fifty-two minutes. He's almost amazed he escaped. Madam Pomfrey had kept an eye on him all day, but a Slytherin is a Slytherin, on bed rest or not, and he'd always been rather resourceful.
He briefly recalls standing here eleven years ago, a wide-eyed five year old, watching his drunken mother get a dragon tattooed around her left ankle. She had smiled crookedly at him and told him it was for him, her little "dragon."
He smiles crookedly now, and tells the wizard with the green mohawk he wants all the scars tattooed over.
Seventy-two days and ten hours and thirty-one minutes. His feet are in the lake and it's cold as ice. But he barely feels it.
The blue swirls decorating his arms seem to spin, but he likes the one around his left ankle best. A dragon like hers. The rest of his body is twisting chaos, blue lines following exactly where the potion had dripped and tore open his skin. He's lucky Pomfrey was able to patch him up so well, otherwise those pale, fine scars would have been angry, Gryffindor red, and that would have completely ruined his color scheme.
He basks in the double takes and dropped jaws, and is satisfied to see all traces of pity in Granger replaced with shock. He brushes his fingers over the lines on the left side of his face, one running from the bottom of his nose, to cut up through his eyelid and eyebrow, the other starting at the corner of his mouth and stopping at the top of his ear. He doesn't have to look to know he's wearing a shit-eating grin.
Seventy-six days and seven hours and four minutes. Snape is giving him a funny look, almost as if he doesn't believe him. "What?"
The office is dark and damp, but it's Snape, what could you expect? He snorts and tilts his head to the side, knowing he'll probably never see his favorite teacher this confused again.
"Draco, what did you say?" He seems anxious. There's this tone in his voice. Almost like hope.
"I don't want to be a Death Eater."
He was nervous coming down here, but it's all worth it when Snape smiles at him. And it feels good to know that for the first time in a long time, someone is proud of him.
Eighty-two days and ten hours and fifteen minutes. He's certainly not okay, Draco muses as he slips his feet into the lake. He might never be again. His decorative new skin has met a less-than warm welcome, but the crazy headmaster likes it, and in the end, he's still Draco Malfoy. Everything he does is done with pride. So he doesn't wear long sleeves, even if it's deathly cold outside, and he refuses to grow his hair to cover his face, as Daphne Greengrass suggested. He keeps watching sunsets and counting the days, the hours, the exact minutes, since he heard of his mothers suicide. He keeps leaving the windows open and laughing at Theodore Nott, who seems to have taken his place as head Slytherin jackass. He defies the Dark Mark and makes sure to show off his blue stripes where it would've been. He's arrogant, and prideful, and alive.
He looks in the mirror and doesn't see his mother and he doesn't see Lucius. He traces the twisting blue across his body and knows he's not just some scarred remainder of what his parents left behind. He's his own person, and it's time he starts acting like it, dammit!
Draco smiles and watches the sun go down.
I know you're not supposed to mess with tattoos for a while after you get them, but they're magical tattoos, so I figure it's okay.