Vonne: This dark!fic is rated M for future sex, language, and themes. Also, it will feature Draco Malfoy being, as always, an insufferable little git. Happy late birthday, Malfoy! Oh, and please excuse some familiar paragraphs; this was written while I was going back and forth between pieces and you'll probably recognize some sentences in here somewhere... sorry! Ah!

Also! I wanted to issue an apology to Inkfire, who has probably read the drafts of this so many times, she'll be about ready to murder me...

Dementia
"I wish I were part of the human race."

I. Capricorn

Draco Malfoy awoke to the moon, and the stars, and a field full of goats. And he absolutely hated goats, filthy little creatures that they were.

The blond was on his back, face up to the atmosphere, with his arms struck uselessly away from his side and the front of his pyjamas bunched blatantly at the pale center of his flattened chest. There was something odd and sticky inching through the treading of the fabric and, in the night, one of the caprine creatures croaked. "Goats," he thought, "how commonly pastoral."

With a sleepy sort of stir, Draco let his head lull toward his shoulder, and peered petulantly at Capricorn- literally flooded about the lowly lawn surrounding him. Nothing hurt, not really, but he certainly didn't like it when his fingers uncurled to the onset of a hazy buzz that started someplace in his hands and ended far down to the curve of his feet. Still. The essence of an ocean remained incessantly in his mouth and he blinked at the waterfall of saliva that dripped dangerously out to the earth. Drip, drip, drip.

The every-so-often patter of a sprinkle tumbled tactfully upon his check; and when he lifted his arm to wipe the patch of perspiration that had landed there, Draco had been surprised to find the fluid tainted with another color that was, admittedly, a rather worrisome shade of crimson. "Bugger."

Singularly, it was the only word that he miraculously managed and, as a response, a flush of radiant red ran down his chin from the open ends of his nostrils. Bloody, buggering bugger. Malfoy's were not supposed to get bloody noses and his mother was going to have an absolute tizzy. She'd take one look at his fucked-up face and sob for hours. Father wouldn't be able to console her and, because Draco was almost one hundred-percent positive that the bridge had broken, she'd never look at him quite the same way again. Fuck. If Draco's evening had been like a ballet, then it was undoubtedly the worst performance he'd ever seen. It was the type of recital that only a mother could love- graceful in the way that ducks were graceful and lovely in the way that cockroaches were lovely. Nothing made sense and everything was blurred, bloody, and broken; Draco could barely even lift his useless legs.

Goddamn goats.

Anyway. Draco was a Malfoy and, like all Malfoys, his bitterness came with a side of pride to excuse his currently crippled composure. With a groan, the Slytherin lifted himself from the ground and sat slightly upright, his hair an outright mess upon the crown of his throbbing skull. He envied those that would rise to the sun peacefully from their cozy cots in their cozy houses, ignorant to the strange sort of slumber that he'd come to life to- one that pained him like a poignant little pest. But to test the waters, Draco lifted a tentative finger from the ground and let it hover over the red bulb that had become the front of his once lovely nose. He squared away the scene, took in the expansive of green, and dropped his longest digit down to barely scrape the surface of his flesh, touching it.

And then wearily wished he hadn't. At that moment, one hundred messy things happened at once. The sky lost the battle with the dark clouds above, the wind whistled woefully at the change in the weather, and among other things, the floodgates of Draco Malfoy's nose reopened. Ceremoniously, a river flow of red bled to the cracks of his mouth and when he blinked, the entire expanse of his previously pale jaw was suspiciously soaked with the stuff.

Ouch! Okay, maybe he hurt a little. But only just a little, and it didn't excuse the curious creatures, the stained pyjama satin, or the fact that he wasn't lying on the mattress of his own bedroom cot. In fact, the pain explained nothing. It only gave him a headache and upon the lowly lawn, a rather bothersome chill ran ruggedly down the length of his slanted spine. So Draco moaned with a lunge that ended forwardly; and like a folding chair, he wrapped his arms around his front and hugged himself. Tight.

"Baaahhh," mocked the animals impolitely. Draco scowled at them as a response. He rest his chin on his knees and summoned up the strength to spit something spiteful, though fell short on suitable adjectives.

Clouds with feet, the vile things were; they hobbled through the lawn on their hooves, tearing the grass from the soil with their teeth and, quite rudely, paid no attention to the figure of Draco in the midsts at all. Rather, the hoard of heathens slumped right past him, sleepy eyes just barely gazing over his figure to snub him off completely. So he whisked himself from the ground to a rather impressive stagger and regained himself properly against the likes of the nearest tree branch, beaming boldly at his skill in the process.

Draco Malfoy, balancing act extraordinaire. Thank you, thank you, and apparently he'd been there all night.

But enough of that, Draco didn't need to think about that. What he did need to think about, however, was how in the world he was going to explain this one to his mother. Never in his eighteen years had he walked in his sleep and, for the most part, he was quite certain that Malfoy's weren't even prone to doing so. So when he whisked himself up from the ground it was with a rather great attempt not to wobble. Composure, he thought, would do him wonders; and he affirmed the idea by pushing himself from the bark and stumbling back into the clearing- a bit like a drunk, but tactfully of course, nonetheless.

Yet he found himself scowling at the crook in his left knee. Perhaps he'd slept on it wrong, for he had come to in a manner unfortunate enough. And still, his free hand cradled the front of his nose while, to manage the sense of his proper balance, he clung to the closest objects for support. And, "My God, Draco, what have you done?" his mother would scream when he actually did make it to the Manor. She'd latch her arms around him and grow pale like a ghost, or a specter, or a corpse. Then they'd re-ward the place and badger him about seeing that therapist again.

In horror, he considered the possibility that his condition would grow worse overtime. Perhaps he'd sleepwalk himself straight into the light of civilization and wake up the next morning to find himself shoved in the cellar of some angry war veteran. To prevent it, he'd have to board up the windows, install a lock on his door. "Possibly even bed-restraints." And he laughed madly at the thought. Pathetic idea, really, but he guessed that that's what war did to people.

Made them pathetic.

Anyway, war made Draco Malfoy uneasy, off-center. He hadn't left his family home, still had nightmares, and consistently checked underneath the skirt of his covers at night for the likes of his aunt or Fenrir bloody Greyback. Draco walked on eggshells, never left the house. To his own blatant embarrassment, he slept with a little wax candle lit up like a nightlight and the sheets always reached the heights of his neckline. War made his father fruitless, his mother fidgety. It shaped the foundations of the Malfoy structure into something uncharacteristically idiosyncratic. Though still. Drip drip drip.Time to get back home.

He could see it, too, in the distance from his spot, ever so proud atop the grand hill in front of him. A long time ago, people had envied the Malfoys for the luxury of their home but, recently, their jealousy had been a bit scarce. And what that meant was that the Malfoys had been lucky to be granted the gift of any land at all- visitors included. Not that his father quite appreciated them, of course, for the most arrivals they'd received where the likes of solicitors who hadn't looked up the address in the first place. During the every so often times that some naive sales person did come knocking upon their door, however, Lucius Malfoy took great pride in slamming it right back shut in their face.

"No," he'd tell them, weary of the watchful eye that the Ministry had been keeping over their very doorstep, they did not want a handmade teakettle with the picture of the Wizarding World's bloody 'Savior' on the front. And they didn't want the complimentary Potter-faced quilt, either. "So go away, bugger off, and be somebody else's God-forsaken problem." The Malfoys preferred humbly to rot in peace on their own, thank you very much.

And so it went. Because Lucius wasn't supposed to leave the home, Narcissa went to the market for food. Sometimes she sent Draco, and my God, Draco hated when she sent him. Being sent out to the Wizarding World meant glamours, and potions, and cloaks that made him sweat in the heat of the summer months. It meant hours of trying to disguise his voice and gauzes of tape wasted to cover the infamous Dark Mark on the palest part of his inner left arm. On good days, he'd make it back to the Manor without a scratch on him, carrying as many bags as he could lift worth of his father's potion supplies and the house-elves' cooking ingredients. On not-so-good days, it meant that somebody else was going to have to make the second trip.

In the night, Draco pulled through the earthy wreckage.

Each simpering step kept his toes icy with the dew that molded around him, and he pulled through the back of the clearing with a stumble that led him deep into the brush. Had he his wand, Draco's walk back home would have been far easier; and reminding himself, he mumbled a mixture of curses under his breath hotly. When the War had ended, the Ministry had taken some of what his father called their 'assets', and his mother called her 'life'. His wand was one of them, along with the rest of the family's. The money in Scottland, that was gone, too- as with the summer home in France. They'd been left the shell of the Manor and the rest of the bloody furniture, but all that remained then were the walls and the whispers of the memories that just would never quite die.

Still; he'd cut off contact with the rest of the surviving world and he'd heard of how they didn't even print issues of The Daily Prophet anymore, only Quibblers. Rita Skeeter didn't work in publishing, and the streets were, once again, safe to wander.

The War had ended; life went on. Fall grew chilly and winter got downright freezing.

The Golden Boy, he had an entire bloody swarm of admirers; he had his picture on every pub wall in Hogsmeade. In other news, people had lost limbs, gone crazy, died off. And Draco had been just so goddamn tired of hearing the name 'Harry Potter'. Because who wanted to hear about that arsehole really, anyways? He'd always been a slimy kind of git, hadn't he? Always mucking about the castle with his sense of superiority, high and mighty and Chosen. Well, not so long ago Draco held the claim that he had been chosen too, and then nothing was the same until Draco wasn't 'Chosen' anymore and then things really started to go to shite.

Still, he'd paid for that. Really, really paid for it. In fact, Draco Malfoy had paid for that mistake so much so that he wasn't really sure that all that punishment had even ended in the first place. And that meant that he'd been careful, so careful; for every step he took really was as if he were on eggshells. Like they were stalking him, those Death Eaters; like they were behind him at all times, justbreathing, breathing, breathing down the nape of his neck. Waiting for him to slip up.

But it was the remaining bits of his life that he had to worry about, anyway.

Problem was, was that it all ended up coming back to the past again in one way or another; Draco hated the night and he hated stars because the stars reminded him of space and space reminded him of astronomy, and astronomy reminded him of towers.

Big, tall, magnificent towers. Like dead-of-the-night towers. The kind of towers that looked off into twinkling skies, and cloudy evenings, and open vastness...Drip, drip, drip.

He dreamt about towers like the Astronomy ones on the nights that he didn't dream about killing the innocent.

He dreamt of a figure that he expected was supposed to be himself standing at the back of the large, stone building. He thought he could see himself crying, but he didn't know because, sometimes, his face was blocked out- disconnected. Instead, Draco saw nothing but a blond head and a thin wand and faceless and formless lump. Because he didn't want to remember much about the eighteen years he'd been alive, he filled in the blanks with assumptions and the list of things that his father's books had already filled in for him.

He dreamt of himself in a magnificent house so big that it couldn't possibly have belonged to just his family. It'd been in those dreams that he'd seen it all; and what he saw was the darkness and the openness of a house that seemed almost chillingly too empty.

Other times he dreamt about moons, about cages, about rotting flesh and dead corpses...

What surviving had left him was the routine- the luxurious life of left-over mechanics. He didn't go out much anymore and often, he instead wearily wondered what evaporating might have felt like.

Anyway.

In the end, he was never able to kill Dumbledore. In the end, the Malfoy name meant nothing. He'd lost either way. And of all things his fucked-up existence was the one that he really should have seen coming, but perhaps it had been that old Malfoy pride that had previously kept him so ignorant.

And he hated it, thinking back, but he'd been damned, and he'd been stuck, and he knew it. What he'd never really anticipated was that his eternity would have ended so construed. So now he accepted the pitiful tragedy of his existence as it was, thinking not of the brilliant man he'd always assumed he'd grow up to be but instead, considering the possibility that he'd not become much of a man at all.

So sometimes he thought he might go to Hell. And oher times, he'd been quite certain of it.

Often, however, he thought, "Ha ha, very funny, moving on", except that it hadn't been, and he wasn't. What an awfully horrible joke, his life. And there he was, still waiting for the bloody punch line. One, two, three, four.

So where did it all leave him, then? (Besides, of course, where he was currently someplace in the wreckage of a dark clearing and the path that lead back to the Manor, which meant that nothing had been accomplished and everything had been contorted.) So, "Life," Draco thought, "was funny." Life was horrible and hilarious and impossible to predict. Life ended in a collision of uncertainties and when all was said and done, it faded to a Nothingness of dewy green fields and stick red noses. All along, it was irony that lived and breathed in the veins of the Malfoy line all along. Irony, not superiority, that made the bloodline oh-so exclusive.

The very stuff pulsated through their organs and throbbed through their intestines and, when they died, it grew out in flowers over the mounds of their very graves.

Still. The life of left-over mechanics had placed Draco at a standstill. His father studied him more often and his mother duly coddled him to make up for all the strangeness. "Oh you sweet, small child," she'd had once said to him after dinner as she stood in the doorframe of his bedroom. She stroked his hair lovingly when he'd felt the worst and he'd let her do it for what would become the first times since he actually had been a child, still sweet and still small. He'd notice the trepidation in her unblinking eyes and stay silent, as if noise would break her; she'd never seemed more hollow. Yet she sometimes picked up his hands in an absentminded, motherly way, and say, "You have sculptor's hands," as if she'd been fond of her genetic creation.

Before, Voldemort had spoken to them about planting seeds. After, the vines had become the overgrowth. The sick, mossy guard that had held the world captive. It was curious how things only ever once seemed beautiful or inquisitive or even hopeful; strange how there was once a time before all of that that the world seemed fortunate to be a part of. He was now too foreign to the earth like a native; the new planet that had disguised itself as his indigenous home- the Manor; and he was far too alien to the land that he'd become a mossy part of.

In the 'back then', everything was blurred and blued and bloated. The contents of the nights were absent in his head and he blinked by the bitter bits of the evenings that he was only half-certain had even occurred in the first place. Everything he 'knew' was a question to himself, a semi-certainty that he couldn't quite put his finger on- too numb. So the Malfoys became the weed. The undesirables, unproductive.

It wasn't as if it were bad, necessarily, but it definitely wasn't good, either.

And really, Draco's desire to curl up in the wreckage and vanish completely burned strongly in his core. He thought that even when the sky was blue. Even when it was roasted orange, then burned out to its blackened ash surface.

Anyway, his hands now looked nothing like the pair of extremities that his mother had once praised, for the fading sense of her voice was almost completely drowned out underneath the rush of wind lust that filled his ears and the echo of the night against the wood. "Musician's hands," she'd once called them, petting her nails across the broad expanse of his longest finger. "Artist's hands." In his younger years, she'd forced the piano on him, making him sit at the bench for hours on end playing her song after song after song until he thought his fingers would fall right off.

But it was always worth it afterwards. She'd run her own through the fluff of his white-blond hair in a form of approval. "See what you've created?" she'd ask him during the times he'd play to her by the firelight, too tired to argue much with her incessant pondering. "My lovely child, you were born with beauty," and she'd slip her gaze to the front of his face, fingering just below the point of his inherited jawline."Here," she'd declare, thumbing the sullen expanse of his cheek. She'd travel down to his arms and intertwine like vines her fingers into his, connecting them- mother and son- for just one moment. "And right here."

His hands. His delicate, slender, feminine hands. Artist's hands. Musician's hands. As if she'd been right all along.

Draco would glance down upon them and wonder. He thought, "What, oh, what, had those hands created? Who, oh, who, were these hands now a part of?"

A long time ago, she'd told him that his music gave her art. But what did that mean afterwards? Nowadays, when he played her the piano, she only just got lost in the monotony and stared like a zombie at the doorframe. Still.

When Draco finally reached the end of the woods, he drew out a long, shaky breath. The Manor, in all its left-over glory, sat stationary behind the broad iron gates that surrounded it. The single light that he had spotted off in the distance wavered and, just as Draco let his feet fall forward, went out. He thought the action odd enough before shaking his head minutely, wondering if it had been his father, who might have noticed his absence to wait up for him. Convinced, he swallowed the pain that shot out from the bulk of his shoulder and strode through the barrier of the front yard.

When he reached the doorstep he paused to take in the mangled image of his own reflection in the window. He really did look a mess. Upon his throbbing skull, the crown of his white-blond hair struck out in a variety of different directions. His lip was split and, to top it all off, his nose was absolutely unstoppable. Coated with crimson, the flow of his blood trailed down the front of his once clean pyjamas and soaked onto the chilly part of his numbed-up flesh.

Had he not already been certain of it before, the confirmation of his atrocious appearance only solidified it. His mother was going to have a fit. His father would sizzle with outright disapproval and in the meantime, existence outside would go on. No one would care about the Malfoys.

Draco Malfoy braced himself for the plunge and lifted his red hands to the front of the door handle readily. With a swift lean, he brought his body forward and let the door creak open into the blackness of the greeting room. The great expanse of the place dimly sparkled back at him while, for a moment, Draco thought exhaustedly of how he was really glad to be home.

Until then life just wasn't so funny anymore.

The furniture were in a heap and the curtains were drawn across the midnight. The chandelier at the ceiling was crooked and slanted by walls that were scuffed, and scratched. In the corner, a silver plate glistened as a shock of something sticky dripped from the walls, and at the doorframe looking in on it all, Draco froze. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe; for the air around him seemed too close in at his neck, choking, choking, choking until he had to let it go. "M-Mum...?"

Four years ago in December, Draco had walked straight through the same expansive doors and breathed in the smell of Christmas and mistletoe. His mother sat steadily upon the broad bench of the couch and sighed, "Welcome home, Draco!" as if the house was universal. As if it lived and lived and lived and lived.

But Draco felt no sense of life whatsoever- not now; for no one answered, not a soul. Only a quick scatter of something far off made a clatter and, soon as it'd started, it faded off into the emptiness that remained the interior of a great, marble corridor. "D-Dad...?"

Strewn across the front room, his mother's egyptian blanket sat in an oddly bundled heap. The soles of his feet pressed into shards of broken glass. Narcissa's prized gardenias lie spread out against the tile. Portraits were clawed completely through. Water fumbled out through the roof. When he reached out his foot, he slipped loosely on the ground and jammed his hip into the wooden end of the upside down tea table.

And then he saw her in the spotlight, for she was illuminated on the floor by her hair that was blonde, and beautiful, and branched out. But he mused at the way that her slender arm stretched out to him, fingers uncurled like the legs of a dead spider. Every inch of her was veiny, and bloody, and blue; and her chest seemed stilled in the lack of light and the dawn of terror that thrust down upon Draco. He stumbled over his feet as he rushed forward, slapping the ground with his knees when he finally found her. Narcissa had never looked so pale.

Everything slowed at once. Draco saw the walls leaning in and the windows glaring out. His fingers danced over the flesh of her body, hands sweeping across her forehead to push the hair from her eyes, and the words stuck in the depths of his throat, too dry and hoarse to say anything at all. So he stared, simply stared, and everything just spun.

"M-Mother..." he gasped, terrified, "wh-what happened?"

Narcissa Malfoy opened her pretty mouth, but no words came out. Rather, she gaped up at him like a fish and Draco couldn't control the shakes in his hands, and his feet, and his skull. He'd only made everything more muddled and messy and, soon enough, he thought that the world might have ended. Then the night turned charcoal and dim, and everything became clouded with the thick fog of shade.

Though he wasn't certain of the time exactly, he thought that possibly that it been midnight or later for he feared more than anything the time of the Witching Hour and hoped to the emptiness that, this time, the demons would stay away. Drip, drip, drip. "Mum... p-please...?"

"M-Mum, p-please...".

Draco was certain he'd heard it, the room shrunk around him- 'M-Mum, p-please...'. It hadn't come from his throat or echoed from the walls. Rather, it came from behind his very neck where, ghost-like, a spare breath ran down his spine...

Draco stilled, his arms still strewn across the heap of his mother. His eyes blinked open to catch the flash of shadow as it rose upon the wall in front of him. "Hullo, Draco," came a voice that was not so ominous as it was strangely overwhelming, "we've been waiting so long for you... How'd you sleep?"

A great shudder ran down Draco's spine. He peered down slowly at his lovely mother and smoothed away the blond hair that covered the expanse of her panicked blue eyes. In the silence of the living room, Draco felt her fingers bare down on his forearm and he squeezed his eyes shut to block out the sight of it all because, despite the garden and the goats, despite the detour and his downfall, Draco Malfoy had never felt so helpless in his whole entire life.

"Don't be sad, Draco," said the voice, "I think you and I both know that you and your family deserve this."

And for all of his sins, Draco Malfoy suppressed the rise of bile in the pit of his throat. He wanted more than anything to walk in reverse- to wake up with the goats and to run back home to warn his father to bolt the door shut. "Don't..." he started when the steps behind him grew closer, when small whispers came out from the hallways and the breaths slowed down from her figure. A harsh gurgle sound tumbled from Narcissa's mouth and Draco felt his eyes fill faster.

"Don't what?" asked the voice in a tone so bland that it was obvious that he could care less.

Draco hadn't answered, however. Rather, he'd frozen in his spot and scrutinized the curious way that his mother's chest stopped lifting beneath his arms. And, because she froze like a corpse, he'd grabbed the edges of her nightdress and held them, staring at his blistered bare feet like they'd been useless; and sometimes they were. Useless that was.

Then his fists clenched and he brought the hem of the gown to the place on her body by her ankles. It'd been an unconscious act, but the shield of her flesh gave him comfort in the oddest sense while the voice at the back of his head cooed, "Come now, Draco, don't be so melodramatic," and laughed.

Right.

So perhaps his life wasn't that humorous. At least, not in a ha-ha sort of sense. Ironically so, however- more blatant when considering its sadistic satire. For then the night turned charcoal and dim, and everything became clouded with the thick fogs of the moonlit shade. Draco sat still like a statue; and when the chuckles from the corridors picked up, he bent his head low and ignored the way that the water from his eyes leaked in a lovely pattern with the blood on his chin.

When Narcissa's blue eyes stopped twinkling and the hold on his forearm gave way into weakness, the shadow at the wallpaper shifted. "I wonder what pure blood looks like spilled all over the carpet?" he asked.

The smile on his face was visible even with Draco's back turned. However, they waited a moment only to hear the boy's sob; broken as it'd been, Malfoy's shoulders bobbed with the terror he had for his mother, fingers still fumbling with the cloth of her skirts in disbelief. And yet nothing fit together and everything fell apart. He could sense it then, for as Draco sat upon the marble, the world seemed bigger and he seemed smaller. He couldn't bribe for his mother's life with the likes of pretty words, couldn't save his father (wherever he had been) by shoving forth all the gold in the world. Rather, he, Draco Malfoy, could do nothing; and so that he did. When the wind blew at his face and the rain hit the roof above, the boy didn't even open his eyes.

"Get up," a mean voice told him.

He didn't, so a large, calloused hand pulled forward in assistance to grip Malfoy steadily at the neck of his pyjama collar and yank him to his feet in a matter of seconds. Then, for good measure perhaps, the fingers rubbed encouragingly at the space between his neck and his collar bone. "Good boy," they told him.

"Such a good little purebred puppy."

Somewhere from the back, another gruff voice opted keenly to leap into the conversation; they laughed amongst themselves and pat him on the head. Draco did nothing. Rather, when he felt the point of a wand strike him harshly in the side of his neck, he felt his knees go weak and his head fall heavy. For a split second, he swayed on the floor of his family home, leaning in subconsciously to the warmth of the shadow coated wizard at his side. Then the laughter started all over again and, when the chuckles died out, someone shoved something long, skinny, and wooden into the palm of his perspiring palms.

It took him a moment to realize that the thing had been his wand.

However, Draco did not feel the pulse of magic run through him. He did not experience the thrill of being a wizard or even more magnificent than a mere Muggle. Instead, in the presence of his weapon, Draco Malfoy felt invalid- useless- for he figured not even the simplest of spells could have rolled from his trembling lips. And he wondered if they could sense his uncertainty before realizing he was certain that they could. Undoubtedly they could.

For that matter, they knew. Still.

At his discomfort they beamed and a hairy and rancid smelling figure inched forward to rest his chin there, against the stretch his low and aching shoulder.

Draco heard a sob from the back of the hallway. It was rich, thick, and painful, but it sounded something like his father and the thought made him just that much more woozy.

"Be a good boy," said the man at his side smoothly, "be a good boy one last time."

And the spare hands behind him lifted, slowly allowing Draco's own weak wrists to rise ever so slightly so that, soon enough, he had the wand squared away at his pretty, motionless mother. "Say it," whispered the voice of not-so-mercy. At the back of Draco's neck, his captor's wand dug in deeper. "One spell," he whispered. "Say it."

Anyway. Despite the lot of them, despite the wand at his neck, and despite the darkness, Draco wouldn't.

So everything went black as over the silence someone shouted, "Imperio."