ALIVE: Sectumsempra from Draco's POV
'Draco, why are you so gloomy?'
Draco turned to Pansy, who'd spoken in her usual simpering manner, and raised a sardonic eyebrow at her. The witch shrank back under her thick bob of dark brown and huffed, though it was with an added sense of fear that she did this. Ever since the train ride and the growing list accidents that kept befalling the other students, even Draco's own housemates had been wary around him. It was almost as if they half-expected him to turn on one of them next. And maybe he would. If he were tasked with it, he'd have no choice.
The blonde paled a shade lighter than his hair at this thought and tried to fix on a mask of indifference, but he didn't know how well he was faring. Pansy sighed beside him, the fear gone from her expression. She looked almost wistful now as she said, 'You used to be fun.'
Draco snorted. 'I'm bored,' he stated, and as an afterthought added, 'Not gloomy.'
'Whatever.'
An uneasy veil of silence fell between them: uneasy on Draco's part, for his mind was now well and truly circling the matter he spent his every waking hour trying desperately not to think on. Pansy's words had opened up a floodgate deep inside Draco, and now everything – his darkest, most buried fears – were rushing to the surface at an alarming rate.
Draco stood on legs that felt like they'd just been hit with a jelly legs curse. The movement was abrupt. It caught not only Pansy's attention, but the eyes of at least another half dozen or so Slytherin in the common room.
'Draco, what are you–'
'I-I have to go,' he stammered. 'I have to go.'
He wasn't even fully out the room when the whispering started.
The corridor felt cold on his skin. Like there was ice in the air, or invisible snow falling from the ceiling and clinging to him for all it was worth. Draco shivered and pulled his cloak tighter around his diminishing frame. He'd got thinner over the holidays. He'd lost so much weight that he was now a shadow of his former self, barely functioning, barely breathing.
Draco found himself wishing that he would just stop breathing. It would be a much more pleasant way to go, as far as deaths went, than what was awaiting him back at Malfoy Manor. Because he couldn't do it – he knew he couldn't do it – and he would kill him for it.
Draco shuddered and let out an involuntary sob. A puff of condescended air pooled in front of his face for an instant. He pushed through it; the air tickled his cheeks, freezing the tears that had begun to form in the corners of his grey eyes.
He was going to die.
There was no way around it – he couldn't do it.
Draco Malfoy was going to die and he knew it.
He couldn't get inside the bathroom soon enough. Draco slammed the door shut, hardly wincing at the painful snick the wood made as it cracked against the old timber frame, almost giving out completely but just holding. He pressed his back to the door a moment, inhaling greedily, the poorly contained tears from seconds ago catching on his eyelashes, weighing them down.
He was done.
Draco was done.
He strode over to the sinks with surprisingly precision. His legs no longer felt weak, as they had done back in the Slytherin dungeons. Draco had a renewed strength, despite the tears and the shaking of his hands and the myriad nasty thoughts swirling through his mind.
One thought in particular was spending more time at the forefront of his mind than any other. He bowed his blonde head over the sink, gripping the basin for all he was worth. Draco looked at the wand tucked in his back pocket: Hawthorne wood, a powerful wand that had never let him down before.
It wouldn't let him down now.
Draco plucked the wand from his pocket and inspected it under the dim lights of the bathroom. He smoothed his fingers over the unblemished shaft, so perfectly formed, like everything else the Malfoys had ever owned.
He could do it. He knew this wand could do it, and he had enough anger in him to satisfy the spell. But his parents, what would happen to them?
Draco shook his head harshly. A couple of tears went flying, splattering on the unpolished glass of the basin mirror in front of him. He gazed into it, at his own face reflected there, taking in the heavy bags under his eyes, the darkness around his sunken sockets, the sallow, cut out look of his cheekbones, now little more than skin and bone. Even his hair, normally so glossy and full of life, appeared dank and limp and dead.
Draco gripped his wand tight and lifted it. He positioned it next to his Adam's apple, which bobbed in anticipation. The spell would go straight up. He could do this, he knew he could do this.
Don't think, he told himself. Just do it.
It would be all over. It was so easy. All he needed to do was say the spell. A whisper would even work, so long as the meaning behind it was clear.
Say it. Two words. Say it.
'Oh, don't!'
Draco lowered his wand. His fingers felt numb were they gripped the shaft of wood. The tips of them had turned blue; his knuckles were white. He was shaking all over.
'Don't,' the voice crooned again, and Moaning Myrtle came into view above the toilet cubicles. 'Don't… tell me what's wrong… I can help you...'
Draco shook his head. He was quivering everywhere, like a cold shake wracking his body, one that even a fire couldn't thaw. 'No one can help me,' he said. 'I can't do it… I can't… it won't work… and unless I do it soon… he says he'll kill me…'
He could feel the wand still covered by his numb fingers. It would be over in seconds, no more. Two words and he could end it all. Draco took great, deep breaths, the tears now clouding his vision. He bowed his head over the sink once more and let the emotions roil through him: the fear and the anger and the utter desperation of his situation, and the desire to die by his terms, right here, right now.
Two words. Say them. Say them now.
It was at that moment Draco glanced up into the mirror and saw him. Harry Potter was standing there behind him, staring; his jaw half open and collecting Draco's misery as it peeled off him in waves.
Draco didn't think – he reacted. He spun around, wand held out in front of his skeletal body like a challenge. He watched Harry pull out his own wand, accepting the challenge, and in the next heartbeat spells were flying, shattering porcelain and glass, skipping off the cold stone tiles, rebounding off the ceiling, smashing a wall lamp to smithereens.
Draco's first hex missed Potter by a hair's breadth, slamming into the wall behind him and sending angry sparks flying out. The Slytherin growled, slicing his wand hand through the air to block another curse coming from the other boy. He raised his wand, ready to fire off again–
'No! No! Stop it!' squealed Moaning Myrtle, her voice echoing loudly around the tiled room. 'Stop! STOP!'
Draco shot out another silent jinx. The bin behind Potter exploded, the bang ringing in Draco's ears a few seconds longer than it should have. He was momentarily deaf, blinded by rage. The cistern behind Draco smashed, shooting water and shattered porcelain flying everywhere. Moaning Myrtle screamed like a banshee. The water was gushing out now; Potter ran towards the other wizard but slipped on his own damage, hitting the floor hard.
Draco took this opportunity to end this once and for all. He raised his wand at Potter; his face twisted painfully, and cried, 'Cruci–'
'SECTUMSEMPRA!' Potter bellowed from the floor, waving his wand wildly.
At first all Draco felt was ice, acute and so cold that it burned, from the inside out. His breath stole in his lungs; his heart let out one tremendous beat of protest and then paused, as if waiting for the follow up attack. None came, and Draco realised perhaps belatedly, that he was falling. He staggered backwards, his hands limp at his sides, and tumbled down on to the waterlogged floor with a great splash. His wand fell out of his grasp, rolling away – too far away for Draco to reach.
'No,' he heard Potter gasp.
Draco tried to lift the hand that had fallen across his chest. The coldness just seeped further through him. He managed to move his fingers enough to see them above his chest, and knew as the pain settled fully in, that he was going to die, right here, right now, and that it would be Potter's doing, not his.
Draco's fingers were stained red with blood.
'No– I didn't–'
Potter was on his knees now beside Draco. His incompetent, Gryffindor hands were picking at Draco's bloodstained robes – or it felt like it, at least – little pecks of someone so desperate they didn't even know what they were doing. Draco took solace in this; that Potter would be his downfall; that Potter would be the one to end it all, not him, not his own hand.
It was over. Finally, it was all over.
Draco's eyelids fluttered shut. They'd grown heavy. He didn't want to hold them open any longer. The effort was too great. He just wanted to sleep. From somewhere nearby, he thought he heard an almighty shriek.
'MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!'
A bang sounded, and then there were voices – Draco couldn't work out whom they belonged to, or what they were saying. He knew Potter was still there, clutching at him like some insipid sap; and Myrtle, too, soaring overhead and screeching at the top of her ghostly lungs. The third Draco couldn't place. He was too far-gone, too far beyond the veil to make it out. His mind was abuzz with the haze of his coming death; the voice grew closer, a monotone, soothing.
Draco cracked an eye open for just a second; saw him, a bodiless head among the haze.
Snape.
He'd be trying to save him, no doubt. Draco wanted to tell him no; wanted to say that he needed this; wanted to say that this was what he'd come here to do, and that Potter had simply got to him first. But he couldn't say any of that. His mouth couldn't form the words. He was falling, slipping further and further into the embrace of the veil.
And then he was no longer falling, no longer slipping. The veil was drifting away into the dark without him. Draco's eyes opened, regained their focus. He could see Snape hovering above him, concern etched in his features; Potter over his shoulder, green and shaking; Myrtle's floating form gliding back and forth above them all.
'No!' he tried to croak out, and failed. All he managed was a rasping cough that caused Snape to glare daggers at Potter over his shoulder.
He hadn't died after all. Snape had brought him back. Draco should have been elated: he was young; he had so much life ahead of him. All Draco could feel right now, however, was disappointment. He was ready to die this night. He'd wanted it. And now he was alive.
Myrtle was still sobbing and wailing overhead as Snape lifted Draco into a standing position. His legs were weak and wanted to cave beneath him. Snape gripped him tighter and steadied him.
'You need the hospital wing. There may be a certain amount of scarring, but if you take dittany immediately we might avoid even that,' his head of house said, 'come…' Snape turned at the doorway, and Draco could see the all encompassing fear on Potter's face as the Potions Master said, in a voice of cold fury, 'And you, Potter… you wait here for me.'
Draco tried to feel pity for the Gryffindor, because he'd wanted this and Potter had given it to him on a silver platter; but he couldn't. Anger welled in him, irrational and overwhelming – not at Potter for leaving him in this state but at himself, for not finishing the job when he should have.
Draco knew he wouldn't be able to attempt it again. If he were going to die now, it would be at the hand of the dark creature that had taken over his home: not Potter, not his own stick of Hawthorne, his own hand. For this, and this alone, Draco cried.