Sleep to get away
He lay in his bed, tossing and turning, even his sleep haunted by those images. The images that haunted almost his every waking moment and now even his dreams. Waking, a cold sweat settled on his forehead and he reached, blindly, for his wand
"Lumos"
The room now held dim wand light, enough that he could see, yet not enough that it would wake the sleeping woman beside him. He gazed across at her, resting his weight on the arm not holding the wand. He could hear her quiet snoring and the gentle breathing of his baby son in the room only a door away. Sighing, he extinguished the light and lay back in the darkness, thinking…
He had realised it didn't matter how far away you go, how long you go for or even who you leave behind. Something's in life can never be escaped, no matter how hard you try or how fast you run.
And he had been running.
Ever since the end of the war he had been running. Though what he was trying to escape was a mystery, even to him.
Perhaps it was the memories, the injuries, the fire, the destruction and the death that had surrounded him, engulfed him. How they came back every night, vivid as ever. Sounds, smells; it was as though he was back at Hogwarts again.
But there were other memories that shone just as brightly as the ones that were filled with the flames… well one memory. Just one supposedly ordinary night around two years ago, before the war. Just thinking about it sent shivers running down his spine. Holding an arm out before him he could tell, even without the aid of the light, that his skin was covered in goose bumps. Trying to shake away the uncomfortable feeling that now threatened to overthrow him, he rolled over and became lost in thought again
Perhaps it was fear, fear of what would happen next, what could happen tomorrow. The uncertainty of life became unbearable at times, even to one such as him. Though now that the war was over and the victor had been declared, there was nothing to fear any more… at least that's what he told himself.
Yet again his thought drifted to that night, the only one he did not want to think about, but the one that pushed its way into his conscious mind more often than he liked to think about. But still, it was here again. He had never experienced fear quite like the fear he had struggled to overcome than night. Rejection, regrets, mistakes and misplaced trust. He had feared all of those things yet they had come to nothing, they had been wrongly placed… he had been wrong to fear anything that night, with the exception of himself and the way it would haunt him in years to come…
Then perhaps it was guilt. That he had chosen the wrong side to give his loyalties too, and that had led to disastrous consequences. There was guilt because he had been saved when so many others had died, including one of his closest friend… well as close as a friend could possibly be to him. Then of course there was that he had treated the one who had saved him so terribly with such utter malice and spite, throughout the years he had known him.
Or perhaps it was the guilt that despite everything Draco Malfoy had come to realise something. Something that he could have realised years ago but he had pushed it as far down as he possibly could, his own guilty secret, never to be revealed to the world and not even to himself.
Yes, that was what he was running from. But perhaps he didn't even know it.
And if he did?
Well he sure as hell wasn't going to admit that to anyone.