*** Day 106 - Draco ***
Draco stared down at the Dark Mark on his arm—at the dark outline of the skull and the pearlescent scales of the snake that coiled through its mouth and eye sockets. He remembered staring at the very same mark on his father's arm as a child, and being in awe. He remembered how he'd never wanted anything more in his life.
There had always been a part of him that believed what his parents said about muggles—about how they were dangerous to the wizarding world, and that separation was the only way they would ever stay safe—but that had never been the reason he'd wanted to be a Death Eater. No, politics hadn't had anything at all to do with it. All he'd wanted back then was to belong to something that mattered.
He remembered all too vividly the day that his dreams were realized—the day that the Dark Lord had offered him the mark. It had been so different than he'd expected. No pomp and circumstance, no grandly orchestrated ceremony, just a simple spell and searing pain. It had been over in the span of an instant. In the blink of an eye, his life had been forever changed. And there was no turning back from that now. The magic in the mark was too strong to rebel against, and Draco knew that he was no match for it.
His life was no longer his own. He'd given it up. He'd pledged himself to this miserable existence until either death took him or death took the Dark Lord. And for the first time in two years, he was starting to wonder…why.
There had never been a time in his life that he'd wondered about something more. The word more had just never applied to him. He'd never had any need for it.
"Malfoy?"
The sound of Potter's voice, calling him from across the room, sent a small but inevitable shudder down the length of Draco's spine. His eyes lifted from the Dark Mark and landed in a field of green. In a field of more.
"Is everything alright?" Potter asked.
How in the world had it come to this? How could someone who had broken him time and time again—who he'd broken right back—have come to mean something…more to him? He'd promised himself, hadn't he? That he would stop all of this? That Potter's betrayal in the dungeons had been the final nail in the coffin.
But that had been before the torture. That had been before…Symbolon.
The image of Snape flashed before his mind's eye, standing in the middle of his living room, his black robes damp from rain and his pale skin dripping. He'd just killed Dumbledore. Draco had just helped. And there were no words that Draco had to describe the depth of the misery he saw in Snape's black eyes that night. He'd looked like a man on the edge of oblivion just waiting for the darkness to consume him.
And then Snape had crossed the small distance between them, taken Draco's face in his hands and kissed him. His lips had been hard and wet and salty, and Draco had felt something cold churn in his stomach because he'd imagined kissing Snape a thousand different times in a thousand different ways…but never like that. Never like Draco was the last anchor keeping him from drifting off.
"Is this what you want?" Snape had asked, and Draco hadn't realized before that moment that he was crying. That they both were. "Death and pain and every other evil thing that follows me wherever I go? Is this what you dreamed it would be?"
And maybe that had been the first moment he'd realized that his life wasn't at all what he'd dreamed. That he hadn't wanted all of that darkness, all of that pain.
He hadn't wanted Snape dead, his robes full of fang holes and his blood staining the floor of the Shrieking Shack. He hadn't wanted everyone he'd ever cared for buried beneath six feet of blood-soaked earth.
He hadn't wanted the entire world to burn.
Draco grit his teeth, his hand curling into a fist. Whatever the Dark Lord said that he and Harry were to each other, he didn't believe it. He refused to. There were a lot of things he was starting to refuse to believe. The world had gotten out of hand—it had gone too far—and Draco was done letting death and pain follow him.
He wasn't going allow the Dark Lord to stain the floor with Potter's blood.
"Malfoy?" Potter called again.
"Everything's fine, Potter," Draco answered, unfurling his fist and sliding his sleeve back over his Dark Mark.