Draco was weary. Being on the run with two huge armies screaming for his blood was getting tiring. There was a permanent heaviness in his bones and a fatigue in his soul that he just couldn't shake. He was tired. He was tired of this terrifying uncertainty of where he would wake. He was tired of not knowing what lay around the corner. He was tired of always having to keep his guard up. He was only a boy, forced into a man's role, who had courted death more times than his lips had kissed. He was facing the crushing consequences of his failure, of failing to kill am an old man who was dying anyway, and he was doing it alone. He was being punished for having a heart, for having a shred of a conscience, and he was sick of having his actions misread. There were two sides, two reasons for his not killing Albus Dumbledore. It depended on who you spoke to, the Light or the Dark. The order thought that he was nothing but a cowardly traitor, who turned his back to his heritage.
He couldn't care less what they thought. He had stopped caring about anything quite some time back. A few years back, being seen as a blood traitor was one of his biggest nightmares. He would have killed to keep his bloodline pure. Yet, you couldn't kill an old man to save your mother, a voice remarked wryly in his head. A fresh slash of pain almost caused him to fall over. His mother. Watching her die was almost as painful for him as it had been for her. He had been forced to watch the one person who cared about writhe in immesurable pain, just because he had a heart. Because he had a heart that she gave him. Because he was deemed as weak for having heart. Because he was seen as a failure. She died for him. The last thing he had seen before the tears had blurred everything. Everything but the reality that he was not going to have anyone who would hold him like she had. That he had no one to cry to. No one to turn to when he needed help, or was overwhelmed. He had no one.
He still carried that excruciating mental burden. It was almost like a constant Cruciatus. Even sleep offered no respite. Sleep just brought more nightmares; though nothing was more terrifying than his reality. The horror of his present crashed down on him, and he felt the toll of his exertion, mental and physical, wrack him, and for the first time in an eternity, he cried.
He cried.
He cried for his mother, for the childhood innocence so brutally ripped from him, for the blood he had shed to stay alive, for the immense pain and fear he had been through.
He cried.
So what if he wasn't supposed to show weakness? So what if it didn't fit his image? He was a scared boy of sixteen, who had no one, and was struggling to survive. Yet he must live. If for no one else for his mother. He had to make sure she did not die in vain.
He would avenge her death by doing something with his life.
He would honour her sacrifice.
He would kill the half-blood masquerading as the leader of the prejudiced, bigoted pure-bloods.
Watch out, Voldemort, Draco Malfoy is out for blood.
Draco smiled to himself, and he knew he must look feral, with blood-stained clothes and matted hair clumped with dirt and cuts from the various branches that had cut him as he ran through the forst to escape the Snatchers.
Three days in, and he was going nowhere. He had surprised himself when his drive, adrenaline and thirst for Tom Riddle's blood had not faded in the slightest the following morning. He felt as though it were a slow-burning fire, taking its time, but dead-set on consuming him inside out. He had to do something to control that blaze.
He began the arduous trek towards the one place he had been escaping and avoiding sice the very beginning of the hell his very existence had become.
It was time to go home. That was the heart, the base of operations for the Dark, and by extension, was where the Dark Lord resided.
He was to return to his childhood home,Malfoy Manor.
Draco sat down heavily on a boulder just at the edge of the forest. It was as close to the city as he could go without blowing his cover as being seen. Coming this far out was risky enough, any further was confirmation of the death wish he did not have. He was no closer to Malfoy manor than he had been two months back; those years of aimless running just to escape had really messed up his sense of where he was. He squinted against the harsh wind of the winter pressing against his eyes and tried to make out the village that lay in front of him. Where was it? He spotted a church spire in the distance and felt a memory tickle his thoughts, but he pushed it aside, to consumed with his task of reading the faraway sign that spelled out the village's name.
He was so focused on the sign that he did not hear the leaves rustle behind him, did not feel the eyes burning holes in his back.
After a few more minutes of fruitless straining, Draco gave up and turned to head back into the cover of the forest.
He froze in his tracks.
Voldemort.
Draco was pinned to the spot by those haunting, glowing red eyes that had given him nightmares since the very beginning.
"Ah Draco, you didn't think you could hide forever did you?"
Draco gulped and began to back away slowly, until he stumbled on the rock he had been sitting on just moments before. How had he missed it? How had he let his guard down? Now, for that moment of weakness, he was going to pay. He wasn't a fool, going toe-to-toe with Voldemort now, though the opportunity was ripe, would get him killed. And he wanted to stay alive as long as possible, seeing that his life had come at the cost of his mother's.
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he completely drowned Voldemort out. He started when Voldemort suddenly lunged for him, and he sprang aside, his quick reflexes the only thing keeping him from his imminent death. However, something seemed to be off about the whole set up. Voldemort never travelled alone.
Right on cue, the Death Eaters burst in and formed a ring around the two men.
He was trapped.