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Prompts: Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, chapter 15 - The Forbidden Forest: write about a punishment not fitting the crime. (Bonus prompt #1-sugar)

48. Andromeda: Write about being imprisoned for something that wasn't their fault.

Dialogue 14: "You cannot be serious." / Dialogue 15. "That's child's play." / Random 4: Candid. / Random 9: Grins.

Lovely photo of a couple standing together in front of a fir forest. ( uploaded_ )

Word count: 2,435

He'd had the dream before, and he could recognise it in an instant. Perhaps it had evolved as he aged, but the setting never changed: trees stretched for miles and miles in every direction, tall fir trees spread as far as the eye could see. They stood tall and dark and green against the bright grey of the cloud covered sky.

He knew it was a dream because of an obscure trick he'd taught himself years ago, before he had fled a life of servitude in favour of a life wasted in hiding. The enchanting taste of sugar tickled his taste buds, the flavour glistening and trying to distract him from illusion, to call him from this unknown realm, where he watched himself as though viewing another person entirely. That platinum blonde hair was unmistakeable, though, even from behind. He was the taller half of the couple present, though the other was, of course, just a woman, an older version of a child he'd only ever met in his mind.

As he watched, she murmured something quietly, her exact words lost in the dull cacophony of the unnatural façade he'd come up with. The other version of him laughed, a sound alien to his own ears, and offered his arm to his companion. She took it, resting her head on his shoulder as she recited more lost words, verses that would never be heard. At the same time, her long mess of hair, barely a shade lighter than unroasted coffee beans, sprang free of the knot atop her head, cascading down over and past the soft curve of her shoulders.

And then someone opened their moth, and then they were screaming, she, he, was screaming, the entire world was entrenched in the shrieks of the dying and the long dead, and a voice yelled over it all: "Wake up and take a proper look!"

The uneven bed of pine needles and jagged rocks became coarser and harder to lay still on. Draco restrained himself for the time it took to count out fifteen seconds. In that time, he allowed himself to mourn the loss of his dream, though he knew it wouldn't be the last time, but especially to the screaming that apparently awaited him in the waking world.

A new freak must have been caught and charged, for that sound to exist outside the barred front of his cell. He grimaced, wishing for the sharp, sweet tang of sugar of his dreams to replace the unclean roughness he could taste inside his mouth. The memory of why he'd chosen such an anchor was poorly repressed, scrabbling for purchase in the part of his mind he paid attention to. Somewhat desperately, he tried to shove some distractions before it: the childs' horribly itchy dress pressed against his hand, the electric experience of being tasered, the taste of an apple he'd managed to steal a few weeks earlier.

It wasn't working.

The remembered scent of lilacs and rosemary trembled beneath his flared nostrils. His fingers itched, desperate to hold a weapon, any weapon, and the breeze was painfully fresh against his cheek.

"There is absolutely no possibility that you are still asleep after that chaos, Malfoy."

Eager for the distraction, he jerkily swung his legs over the edge of his bunk, jumping to his feet. "What would you know, Zabini?"

"Temper, temper. I'll tell you what I've learned after being here for years, though, for a price."

Draco let his eyebrows shoot up, apparently amused by this proposal. He had assumed a position beside the other wizards' bed, and was tall enough to rest his pointed chin on his arms, folded on the edge of the lumpy mattress, granting him full visibility of his cellmate.

Blaise Zabini's features were dark and sharp, his cheekbones slicing through the shadows. His mother was passed from one owner to another, based on whether or not she was pregnant. He had three siblings, one of them an older sister he hadn't seen since his sixth birthday, and the other two younger brothers. One of them was dead, the other kept in a rare fit of pique from his muggle parent. Zabini was a few months younger than Draco, and it showed in his careless immaturity, which hadn't been changed by four years in prison. He hated anyone who wasn't as good as him, and that meant that Blaise Zabini would have no issues leaving someone to die: after all, everyone who had ever existed was his inferior.

Draco couldn't stand him.

"What price, Zabini?"

"You owe me a favour."

That was it? "What kind of favour? Because if you want eyeliner, you're better off asking an actual woman, Zabini."

"Patience. Move it, I need to see."

Draco shrugged and obliged, shifting closer to the bars. He could hear Zabini as he moved behind him, but he was more interested in examining the prison for the thousandth time ten days earlier.

The building was windowless. New prisoners - always magical, or at least suspected - were brought through to a checkpoint with a sack over their head, blocking their vision and muffled sounds to a point that it was near impossible to effectively interpret them. By the time it was removed, there was no way to tell where one had come from, where outside was, or even where one was in relation to anything. The area, all grey concrete, gave the impression of being deep underground - but it could just have easily been a thousand feet in the air in a windowless skyscraper. The guards knew, but if anyone asked anything, then the questioner would be subjected to the same humiliating punishment as those charged with using magic, intentionally or not, on muggles: an iron mask jammed over their mouth, left there until they starved or someone thought to remove it.

The second possibility was so rare, it was used as a joke among the guards.

"Look at their arms," Zabini instructed, meaning the screaming man and his prescribed guards. "Watch."

The new prisoner screamed and fought, but Draco saw the exact moment when his time ran out. One of the guards passed another a tiny weapon, something that looked almost benevolent compared to the batons, blades and firearms they carried for so-called 'crowd control' in the prison. It didn't look longer than Draco's index finger, this thin plastic tube, but as they reaised it, something extra caught in the light. He felt his eyes widen, wrapped his fingers around the bars before him. "You cannot be serious. What are they - they cannot -"

Zabini's cold hand came down on his shoulder, his thick accent a candid, dismissive whisper in Draco's ear. "Don't be obtuse, Malfoy. You know these muggles are pretty much evil. They would never hesitate to condemn anyone more powerful than them. Certainly haven't so far."

It was fuel for nightmares, watching someone dressed in rags struggle against captors all in black. Gloved hands wrapped around each of his limbs, restraining him slowly: right leg, left arm, right hand. Finally, the last hand stretched forward, plunging the needle into the manic wizards exposed neck.

He went still.

The whisper of Draco's cellmate was so dreadfully eerie, he knew he would never forget it. After all, it was so well timed that he wondered if the guards had said it before:

"Childs play."

"What did he do?"

He could practically feel the grin of the dark skinned companion, the sensation of the hairs on the back of his neck standing up more than enough to give away the sadistic glee of the younger man. "Oh, that?

"That's just the punishment for falling in love with one of their precious muggles."

"There's a punishment for that?"

"You should see the punishment for muggles who produce wizards."

Perhaps the muggles weren't willing to use the term 'prison' when they named the institution that would hold abnormals for decades to come. It didn't make it any less of a prison, and whoever planned the ritualistic routines that the occupants completed went out of their way to emphasise that. The cafeteria was completely grey, lined with cold stone as though conforming to a dress code that seemed to cover everything, from the inmates to the walls.

Draco poked at whatever he'd been given to eat, thinking wistfully of the picnic in his dream the night before. His companion was a lot of things, but a cook she was not. Everything she would lay out for the two to share would be dressed in plastic, bought from a store.

He'd never heard her speak, but he had an idea of what her laugh would sound like. He'd pieced it together in his daydreams when the days were too grim to deal with, a combination of everything from the fragment of a muggle girls' laugh he'd overheard once, to the quietly distinguished chuckle of his pureblood mother.

The girl had been a constant in his dreams and nightmares alike, for as long as he could remember. The first recollection was from around his fourth birthday, an image of a child with an air of smug glee about her. She hadn't said any words - she never did - and he had only seen her face for a moment in the dream: a glimpse of wide chocolate eyes, which she cast to the ground as she pressed her hands to her lips, squashing the laughter that sought to escape. In that first dream, he'd watched as she played with the other, happier, version of him, and for the first time in his life, he'd felt safe. It was strongest when her tiny fingers brushed against his.

When he'd awoken from that dream, he'd asked where she was. His father had hit him, annoyed at his childish naïveté. "You're dreaming, boy. Stop trying to lie to yourself: you know she is no more real than any chance of anyone ever being your friend."

A cruel thing to tell a child, but Lucius had been trying to protect his son from the disappointment of loneliness, Draco knew that now. At the time, though, he'd wept where he thought no one could see. Then he'd gone to sleep and it had started all over again. The beginning of a ritual that recurred every time he fell asleep.

God, I wish I'd just once seen her face properly.

Malfoy."

"What?" he snapped, glancing towards the guard who beckoned him over, the black clothing making the man nothing more than an ominous shadow against the wall. Beside him, though, was something Draco had never expected to see, not while he was awake.

Her long mess of hair, coated in dirt and grime, sprang free of the knot atop her head, falling in a matted mess over and past the curve of her shoulders, held stiffly and jumpily. Maybe he'd never seen her face up close, even after all these years, but he knew it nonetheless, those wide brown orbs, filled with knowledge and secrets just as familiar as his own - maybe more so, as mirrors were scarce on the run. He rose out of his chair slowly, his disgusting meal left to rot on the table, something that was honestly the best thing he could do with it. His gaze never left her face, and though he wouldn't know it until she mentioned it much later, the contact brought a spark to his. It was just a shimmer at the time, but all the same, the gleam caught her eye. She decided right then that she had to help him.

For better or worse.

"It's her."

The padding on the chairs was thin, worn down after years of irregular use and lack of care. Its' history was dotted sparsely through time, starting with its' creation to cover the base of the wooden chairs of the 'visitors room' in 1892. The fabric had once been a striped pattern, red and silver, but that had long since been worn back to dull variants of what was pretty much shades of gray. It wasn't comfortable at all.

"These are possibly the most uncomfortable chairs I've ever had the misfortune to sit in."

Draco stared at the woman opposite him, suspicious of her intent now that he'd had a minute to think. It didn't make sense that his dreams had reproduced a real face. It couldn't matter less to him that she was real - or at least it shouldn't. Now the idea that the muggles had a way to get inside his head was driving him mad. "What are you?"

She crossed, uncrossed and re-crossed her legs while he waited for an answer. "Why don't you sit down?"

He crossed his arms, leaning against the wall. "Look, lady, I don't have to listen to you. I don't have a right to speak out or complain or however they phrased it before, but that doesn't mean you have the right to speak to me. In fact, I was informed that I didn't have the right to an attorney. How are you here at all?"

She smiled, and though it barely touched her lips, her brown eyes turned bright and warm. He concentrated as best he could on maintaining his ice shield while she stood and moved closer to him, striding with all the stumbling grace of a woman who usually ran. "I have a deal with Filch."

"The Warden?" A man so frosty he made Draco look warm and loving, Argus Filch had stringy hair, mismatched eyes and a face so lined he looked like he'd be better placed in a display case than at his desk in his office. He was a success story, though, or so the muggles claimed: a Squib. A case of magic being completely crushed out of a magical line. He seemed to take great joy in punishing magical people. "How the -"

"Language, please, Draco. Is it true you were charged with teaching children magic?"

He uncrossed his arms, pressing his flattened palms against the cold, cracked tiles behind him. "That's what they claim. The reality is, they detest me for my 'gifts', like they always do. Muggles always want what they don't have. What of it?"

She glanced back at the window, as if gauging her remaining time. Then she leaned closer, her lips brushing against his cheek as she took a breath to murmur. A thrill of energy shot down his spine, then turned to ice when he realised just what she was asking for:

"What do you know of the rebellion?"