All Things Go
As Draco dies, he thinks.
7
Madness runs in the family. He's known this; he's always known this. Greybeck once told him that it takes a week for the Dark Lord to kill a traitor. Not because he can't find him,
(of course he can find them, of course he does)
but because he likes their fear, their terror, as they await to be hunted, to be killed. And on the last day, when they think they have won… that is when he strikes.
It doesn't stop him from running. He is running, running far, far away. He has been hiding for days, wet and tired and hungry and dying. Snape bought him time: Snape, the man who killed Dumbledore on his mother's wishes, the man who saved him from the Dark Lord, the man who is a spy, a traitor, a mole, a Mudblood, a… Snape went back. Snape told Him that Draco was hiding from the Aurors and the Ministry, and that he couldn't risk being found, but the Dark Lord knew, he knew, he knew, despite Snape's powers, despite his mind, because Snape was weak, weak from fear, and worry and heartbreak, and now Snape was dead, and Draco knew because they sent him his wand.
Severus is dead, and now it is only a matter of time.
Sometimes he wonders if they will bother to find him. What if they forget about him, the disgraced son of The Malfoy, le petit dragon? What if they are so distracted with finding and killing Potter that they don't notice his absence? What if they are so pleased with Dumbledore's death, they forget to punish him? It is only his pride that stops him from weeping; he has no more hope, no chance of surviving.
He burned the wand – no use in letting them track me with it; I'll have to go Muggle, live like dirt, live in the dirt, I am dirt, but they will not find me – and let the ashes float away, drift in the wind. They were tossed and turned, finally free. Draco can not do the same to his own wand, can not allow himself to rid himself of that stupid piece of wood, that useless, stupid, stupid, stupid, piece of shit, that—
He finds a cave as dusk is settling, a few kilometres away from the Forest. The mountain, the one he used to see from a distance in the towers (when he used to watch the sunrise), arched high above him, and over-looked the dark and twisted trees. He sees bones littered on the floor, but is too tired to care. He is cut and bruised, but is too tired to care. He could by dying, but he is too tired to care.
When he sleeps, it is the deep, troubled sleep of a broken man.
6
He awakes with the sun, his tongue thick and dry, his lips cracked and bleeding. There is a hunger in his stomach unlike he has ever know, and he feels as is his humanity is slowly slipping away. As he lies in the morning light, half-covered by the shadows of the cave, half-exposed to the world, he remembers his Aunt Bellatrix—the dark woman, with the half-mad grin, and the evil glint, and he thinks: this is what its like to be her.
He cannot move for minutes – or maybe hours. Too tired to move, too hungry to sleep, to bruised to eat. When a bird calls, he has to stifle the urge to chase it – he is not mad yet. But Snape taught him things, small, useful things before he went away and…
(the voice in the back of his mind, the voice of truth, or as he likes to call it, the voice of Black, finishes the sentence for him, words too terrible to speak aloud, too terrible to imagine –
murder.)
… and so he finally moves, finally brings himself to to find water, to gather some berries, to sharpen some sticks. He is too tired to think, and for that he is grateful. The thought of his actions – the knowledge that he has been reduced to Muggle ways and forms – is worse, far worse than death.
(And isn't that the tragedy?)
But he eats, driven be hundreds of millions of years worth of evolution, to survive. His pride is almost gone, now, and he clings to one important truth: I am right.
The day brightens, the heat is oppressing. He moves on from camp. He walks, and walks, with no purpose, or direction. He fears the light; fears being seen, which is ludicrous, because the area is deserted – has always been deserted – and not even Muggle filmmakers dare venture towards the dark depths of the forest. But Draco has been living in it for a week know, and if anything, he knows that if you stay silent, if you keep your head down, and avoid attention, you can go far in the dark.
(the voice, that haunting, taunting voice, tells him that maybe if he learned this lesson years, months, days ago, he might not be in this situation, he might be free, he might be whole.)
5
He wonders if it is possible to be mad on your third day.
The colours have changed, the light seems darker now, and the green seems brighter somehow. The blood of the evening sky haunts his dreams, and his sleep has become disjointed and bizarre. He sleeps much now, and passes the time by trying to find food. He has made himself a fireplace, using the bones to small mammals as a hearth, and it suddenly strikes him, that once the thought of touching the remains of a living, breathing creature – something that felt and maybe even thought – would cause him to recoil in disgust. But not any more.
He wonders when he lost his pride, only to realize that it wasn't his to have to begin with.
4
It is raining. Thunder roars overhead, and he huddles under a tree, his cave, struggling to light a fire with wet wood, shivering against the cold, still dressed in his wet robes, and he realizes he has never been so terrified in his entire life. Lighting cracks, and for one wild moment, he thinks he sees a tall, shadowing figure at the base of the cave, but the wind shifts, and it is gone. He can't breath; he can't think. He's crying, for the first time since he was eleven years old, and Harry Potter beat him once again, and his father was angry, and his mother frowned.
The thunder drowns out his sobs.
3
When he awakes, he can't move, and his eyes are sore and dry. His lips are cracked, and his legs wont move, but somehow, somehow, he's alive. Living and breathing. Alive. He didn't know until he woke up that he thought he was going to die. His emotions were fried, his mind was working through exhaustion and malnutrition, but somehow, he was alive. And damned if he didn't feel good about it.
He laughs, that day, for the first time in months, maybe years. His voice cracks from disuse, and sounds foreign and strange, but maybe that's because he's never been so truly happy before, never found anything so damned funny as being happy to be alive when at any minute, any second he could be dead and there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe that's what his mother meant when she talked about irony, shoved literary devices down his throat, read him poetry and prose. Maybe that's why she read him Shakespeare as a child, and Milton as a boy. Maybe that's why his life is so fucking fucked up.
The laughter ends, and dissolves into fresh tears. Now he knows why he hates crying. Once you start, it never ends.
He ignores his sniffles, and goes to find food. Instinct overruled emotion, and for the first time in his life, Draco didn't care about his pride.
2
He is so tired of walking. He walks slowly sometimes, quickly others. He makes it through open fields, and country sides, avoids villages and towns, and sleeps under the moon. His wand is in his pocket at all times – he dares not use it. He will not make their life easier, using spells that will catch attention. He will live off the land, like a pilgrim, like a Muggle. He wonders if his father would appreciate that sentiment, and smiles bitterly against the wind. Because his father is rotting in a cell, away and useless, slowly going mad in his despair, soaking in his own urine and filth, sitting in Azkaban, rotting in a cell, away and useless… He is antsy. Scared. Nervous. Angry. He is everything at once, and yet, at the same time, numb to his situation. Nervous shock, maybe. Or maybe just defeat. But Malfoys are never defeated.
("A man can be destroyed, but not defeated…")
Madness runs in the family. He's known this; he's always known this. His father, the cold, demanding and infallible father—the one who taught him to fly, and hunt, and who read him stories, and who taught him magic—his father told him about the Malfoys. The Malfoys, strong and undeniable in their wealth, had power and presence. It was the Malfoy blood in his veins that made him a man, and it was the Malfoy blood that he carried. But there was a tinge to the blood, some darkness in the crimson stains. After all, madness runs in the family. And his mother is a Black.
All Blacks are mad. Years of in breeding and inter-marriages and too much fun at family reunions and pure blood mania had resulted in the downfall of the family. Hubris, perhaps; its fatal flaw was it's own pride in its blood. And now it ends with him, the last legitimate son to a broken family, with nothing but its name, and its madness.
That day, he feasts on rats.
1
When he scratches the seventh line on his wand with a bit of sharp rock, he realizes that the end has come. He tries not to think, tries to busy himself with plans, plans on where to go; plans on how to fight, plans on what to do, but all he does is lie in the sun and think.
He thinks about his life, and what he did. He thinks about Pansy, and her smell; he thinks about flying, and how much he wanted that Snitch. He thinks about his work, and how useless it is in the end. He thinks about himself, and what he has done in sixteen miserable years. He is too young to have changed the world, and yet his time is up, and he knows that he will go with dignity and grace. He imagines death, and what it must be like to be dead, and what it's like to have a green light heading towards you, and about how his mother will feel when they tell her about his death.
He realizes he knows so much about his father, and nothing, nothing at all, about his mother, who might be the one person on the planet who loves him, and who is probably dead because he failed Lord fucking Voldemort.
Anger. It is all he can see, all he can know. He doesn't want to die, he realizes. He doesn't want to be just another murder on Voldemort's wand, just another ghost waiting for retribution. He doesn't want to be a child anymore, a weak, spoiled brat hiding in the shadows because of their own insecurities and drawbacks.
It is deadly to try and run from Lord Voldemort.
It is deadly to hide from Lord Voldemort.
It is stupid to think that he can switch sides.
It is stupid to seek refuge with the Order.
It is madness to fight Lord Voldemort.
Madness runs in the family. He knows this; he's always known this.
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To be edited at some point. Written and posted at a ridiculous hour of the morning. Love me :)