Authors note: Mucho thanks to Sanguiyn for volunteering for the thankless taks of fixing my horrendous grammer, any remaining mistakes are mine.

Also much love to Beth for all the ego stroking and to Becci for not complaining that I keep sending her random paragraphs from this on MSN at all hours.

If you like it review it!

We'll Meet In Russian Literature,

Fourth Floor, Midday

- Maxïmo Park

Draco Malfoy felt completely and utterly exhausted, but then, he thought wryly, a long day's hard labour was bound to do that to a fellow, though he supposed it could be worse (he had recently decided to take on a more optimistic perspective on life in a bid to stave off looming despair). He was almost tempted to follow up this thought with a cheerful 'at least it's not raining', but he knew what such stray thoughts got you; they got you wet.

Sadly, this almost whimsical train of thought, and having such a thing was certainly a feat in this place, was interrupted by a harsh bark of foreign ire, which startled Draco back into alertness and sent him hurrying back to the pile of stones he was meant to be transporting.

The unintelligible growl from the guard that was the follow up to this incident reminded him that he should probably at least try to pick up the native language here, but then again, he was, to be blunt, completely awful at languages. He knew everyone back home had always assumed that, with his name and his breeding, he was fluent in all sorts of foreign tongues, and he had admittedly never done particularly much to dissuade people from this idea, but to be perfectly truthful, he couldn't even manage the most basic French.

They'd tried to teach him as a child of course, first French and then German, but he simply could not do it. His parents, and in the dark of night he'd entertained the thought himself once or twice, had feared that he would never be able to perform magic, as the Latin would simply be beyond him. This fear had led to two miserable years of intense coaching in Latin by a bitter old spinster named Hephzibah, who smelt like cabbage, before he'd started Hogwarts. On the plus side, he'd been able to impress staff and students alike with his impeccable pronunciation in his first year.

Draco realised he'd been drifting off again when a bit of gravel hit him on the back of the head, bringing him back to reality with less of a bump and more of a sharp stinging sensation. He made an obscene gesture at the guard when no one was looking and then went back to the monotonous and taxing task of transporting various things around the building site. Though at least he wasn't in one of the teams moving the gigantic blocks of marble around today. He'd never thought he'd have been able to sympathise with the slaves who built the pyramids, but he certainly could now.

-

There was a lot of horrible things about this place, this work camp, but in Draco's opinion one of the worst was the fact he had absolutely no idea where he was. Without learning the language – and he had somehow developed this terrible fear that if he tried to learn another language all the Latin would fly out of his head because he suspected himself to be a two languages at most type of person – he could only go on the scant few things he could glean from his surroundings.

He had ascertained they were probably somewhere Eastern European from the Slavic mumbles of those around him, somewhere quite rural; he'd been at three separate work camps and never seen a single town, neither from the camp or in his travels to and thro in the back of a cattle truck. But that was it, and that could be anywhere.

When he'd first arrived, he'd thought they were in Russia, but then winter had come, and though it was bitterly cold, no one froze to death, so he supposed they probably weren't after all.

He didn't know how long he'd been here either, and he had no idea of the date. He wasn't even sure how old he was; it was summer now, but exactly what part, he wasn't sure. It was revelations like that that made this place more unbearable than any amount of work and brutality ever could.

He knew why he was here of course; he was reminded of it every single time he lay on the saggy, hastily hammered together planks of poor quality timber that passed for a bed round here (oh if his family could only see him now) and stared up into the appallingly average face of Rabastan Lestrange.

-

He was woken up every morning to a face full of bitterly cold water. There was really no need to wake everyone up like that; the guards just enjoyed it. Though it was a mere annoyance in summer, Draco sincerely hoped he'd have been moved again before winter began. He didn't particularly fancy adding hypothermia to his already lengthy list of woes.

That morning, he happened to take more than two seconds to scramble out of bed for the morning head count, and so he was treated to a swift boot to the ribs. It left him doubled over and scrabbling for breath. He peered up at the guards through what had once been his fringe but was now just part of his hair slightly shorter than the rest. Ah, it was McGonagall (he'd taken to nicknaming the guards in moments of boredom, and this one had always reminded him inexplicably of the old hag who'd taught him Transfiguration what seemed like a lifetime ago). That explained it; McGonagall had always had it out for him, and Draco liked to think it was because he was jealous of his good looks. Though, of course, he couldn't understand a word the brute said, so he would never know.

He dragged himself wearily to his feet, hoping to avoid another kick. McGonagall leered stupidly at him, his nose almost touching his, but Draco averted his eyes from the hateful pair looming into his line of sight. He'd been here long enough to know not to take such obvious bait. McGonagall looked briefly disappointed that he hasn't risen to the challenge, before turning his malevolent attentions to the boy directly to Draco's left, a quivering ball of dirty brown hair and nerves. The boy was relatively new to the place; unfortunately for him, it showed, and the guards found an almost demonic glee in making things hard for him. It was tragically apparent to all that he probably wouldn't even last the month.

After the ordeal that was the morning count was finally over, it was time for the prisoners morning meal. Though what they actually got was a meal in the loosest possible sense of the word; bowls of steaming mulch which was simply unidentifiable as any organism that had ever existed on the gods' green earth. It came in two distinctive flavours: tasteless or memory of old vomit, but you ate what you were given or starved.

After receiving his daily dose of textureless sludge from a surly guard with a full face of ginger fuzz (reminding Draco very much of what would be produced if a Weasley bred with Hagrid) and who was obviously not at all happy to be doing it, Draco sat himself down on a hard wooden bench.

He always ate alone; the natives were naturally suspicious of this aristocratic looking foreigner in their midst. He didn't really mind though; it wasn't like they would have understood each other anyhow.

The building where the meals were served had obviously been thrown together in a great hurry (Draco speculated that this particular work camp had been a last minute addition to the ranks), as the wood was not protected against the elements and there were holes and gaps all over. If you sat on certain benches in bad weather, you would probably get rained on. Draco harboured the horrible suspicion it would probably collapse around their ears one day, and he could see in the nervous glances that some of the guards threw each other every time a storm descended that they had much the same thought.

In some ways, the drafty hall reminded him a bit of Hogwarts, and when he closed his eyes, he could almost fool himself that it was. Everything had seemed so simple when he was there, and he cursed himself daily for cutting his time as a student short. He'd give almost anything to be back there now, even with the Dark Lord's threats hanging over his head. Anything was better than this new indefinite misery. Not to mention he missed his Slytherin posse. In fact, he'd even go so far as to say he missed seeing Potter and his minions, their smug little faces staring suspiciously at him across the Great Hall every morning.

He didn't like to think of how it would have changed in his absence though. He knew there'd been a war and all, but in his head, it was still the same old Hogwarts. Never mind that in reality he didn't even know if it was standing any more… And then there was the matter of Dumbledore's death… No. Thinking of things like that was just as depressing as the unfinished wooden planks that formed the featureless buildings where he now spent his days.

-

Today, Draco was on corpse removal duty, the worst of all the possible jobs you could be stuck with around here. Since he didn't speak the language, he had had to learn all the tasks he was expected to do by copying what those around him did. It had been particularly difficult in this camp. The place seemed to operate on some sort of rota system, and therefore he was forever changing jobs.

At first, he'd been surprised that they even needed a body clean up team here – they actually fed you regularly in this place, which was a novelty in Draco's experience, and the guards were relatively un-violent – but then he'd been rotated onto the actual building site and had realised how incredibly dangerous the work here was.

He dreaded this rotation; he'd never touched dead bodies before, and some of them had died in particularly gruesome ways. The ones where you had to remove the boulder that had crushed them first before cleaning what was left of them up were the worst.

No, he thought, in fact, the worst of them all were the ones who were still alive. There were medical facilities here, but they were rudimentary at best, so the seriously injured were just thrown on the cart and left to die. If you were lucky, then, when no one was looking, a sympathetic worker would put you out of your misery with their spade. But if not, you'd be left to slowly bleed to death amongst the bodies of your former comrades. It was not a nice way to go.

Draco had come to think of it all as penance for spending the entire war cowered in a filthy hut.

As he placed his spade in his cart, a fat drop of rain fell onto it, and then there was a pause, and the heavens opened. Draco was soaked to the bone within minutes. He cursed violently and passionately; today would be a busy day, and if there was one thing more dangerous than building work with no protective equipment or machinery, it was doing building work with no protective equipment or machinery in torrential rain.

-

Draco was never sure whether to be thankful for the fact that building magical fortresses such as this one required everything to be done the Muggle way, so as not to interfere with any later wards placed on the building, especially Dark magic ones. On the one hand, if he hadn't been sent to the work camps, he would have undoubtedly been killed a long time ago; on the other hand, he wasn't sure if he even counted as alive anymore.

-

Another of the many cons of being on the body pick up teams was that your work carried on after everyone else had finished and gone for their second meal of the day and their three or four hours sleep. This meant that not only did you get even less sleep than the pittance you usually got, but also that you got the dregs of the day's mulch – the burnt and the watery – or you didn't get anything at all.

Draco didn't really much feel like eating after a day of washing innards off slabs of marble, but then again he didn't really feel like fainting tomorrow either. He had memorised his schedule in his time here and knew that tomorrow, he was mixing the day's cement, and if he was too busy being hungry or falling asleep on his feet to mix it correctly, then the guards would beat him. With this thought in mind, he wolfed down the small bowl of cold, horrendously burnt mulch and then let a guard escort him back to his barracks for the night.

Draco was just trying to get as comfortable as possible on his rudimentary bed (it could be worse; theirs was, from what he'd seen on his days on cleaning duty, the only barracks to actually have any beds at all.) when there was a horrendous commotion outside of the barrack door. It swung open with a crash. Two guards clomped into the room, holding a ferociously struggling man between them. Draco was shocked; he'd never seen anyone still struggling this far into the process, and he wondered why the guards hadn't just killed this particular prisoner as they would have any of the rest of them.

The new arrival gave a sudden almighty roar, and the guard behind the main two was so startled he almost dropped the lit torch he was holding. The other guards just soldiered tenaciously on, dragging the prisoner between them, who was now dragging his feet, refusing to walk.

It wasn't until the small party passed right by Draco, on their way to the only free bed in the corner, that he realised who the new arrival actually was.

"Merlin's beard…" he breathed almost involuntarily. "Harry fucking Potter…"