Content Warning: thoughts about self harm, references to drug use, drug dealing, a brief reference to prison rape, violence
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Finding the spoon marked a turning point for Draco.
His mind still fled to Grimmauld Place whenever possible; there, he cooked dinner, read, played board games and squabbled with Ron, soaked for hours in pine-scented bubble bath and sometimes shared the bathtub with Harry if he felt so inclined. Hammond yelled at him for staring into space, hexed him for kneeling on a dirty floor, cleaning rag in hand, for up to ten minutes without moving. Draco let it happen. In these moments, he seemed to be watching himself through a window, as if he had in fact very little to do with the thin, empty-eyed boy in his prison robes. He saw himself wincing from Hammond's hexes, cowering when the Auror shouted, and felt little to nothing. Even the hunger had lost its sharp edge. He ate what he had, but he no longer hoarded pieces of bread like he used to. There was no need, when he had a full pantry at Grimmauld Place at his disposal if he so wished.
Even so, his hands, if not his conscious thoughts, kept returning to the spoon he had found in Crankshaw's cell. He never hid it in the shower room, never parted from it despite the risk of being caught. When he was alone in his cell, he often took it out of its hiding place in his sleeve and dragged the make-shift blade across the wall behind his bunk. The sound of metal on rough stone should have been unpleasant – scritch-scritch, not unlike a broken quill on cheap parchment – but it wasn't. He liked the monotony of it, the recurrent tedium of the movement. And he liked how the blade grew sharper and sharper, how a thin red line would appear on his wrist at so much as a feathery touch against his skin. He always tried it on his left arm. He imagined it was sharp enough by now to peel off a layer of skin, remove it with surgical precision. The Darkness within the blade might be strong enough to sever ties that were magical rather than physical. It might be able to cut away a Mark left by the Darkest of wizards, and if it took Draco's life in the process, that might be a fair trade, all things considered.
He never lingered on these thoughts for too long. At some point, an Auror would walk past his cell, and he would quickly slip the spoon back into his robes, careful to turn the blade up so it wouldn't cut through the fabric. He had no wish to be whipped and perhaps bleed to his death hanging from the bars of his cell like a slaughtered deer. Death was an option, which was as it should be. He wanted to set his own terms if he chose it.
Which he wouldn't, not as long as there was Grimmauld Place, and Harry. He didn't exactly need his sanity; in a place like Azkaban, it proved to be a hindrance rather than an advantage. But he needed his escape, his channel to a world that was not-here. Absurdly enough, he needed it more than he'd ever needed the meagre rations or the few hours of sleep he was allowed between work shifts.
Harry would probably tell him to get rid of the spoon, to drop it down one of the stinking lavatories he was made to clean. And he promised himself that he would, his heart beating in his throat whenever Hammond stomped past his cell. Being caught would be a nightmare, no doubt about it. He'd never been good with pain, and would probably cry and beg them to stop a few lashes in.
Still, every night he returned to his cell with the spoon still in his robes, and almost every night he took it out, his thoughts escaping reality as he ground the blade against the wall over and over.
Keeping his options open, as it were.
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The exercise yard was a flat square of stone, enclosed on four sides by steep gray walls. A few cells looked out on the yard from above. Those were coveted; you could shout down at the inmates milling about in the yard, could even toss down things wrapped in bits of fabric or have things tossed up to you. One of the men who possessed a yard cell would drop tiny flasks of Everdream Elixir from his window – for the right amount of Galleons. Some Aurors were in on it, some weren't, and business hours were set accordingly. If the Auror on guard climbed the steps to his lookout and settled down with the Daily Prophet, it was good to go. If they stalked around the yard and hexed anyone not engaging in 'exercise' (that was, walking in loose circles around the place), business had to be conducted another day.
Inmates on Levels One to Three were allowed four hours of exercise per week, inmates on Levels Four and Five two hours. Level Sixers never saw the light of day. Prison reform or no, the Wizengamot would not allow high-ranking Death Eaters out of their cells – those who would have received the Kiss, in pre-reform days.
As a Level Two prisoner, Draco was taken to the yard twice a week, along with the other inhabitants of his cell block. He'd never particularly looked forward to it. He had no business scheme he wanted to implement, had stayed away from things like Everdream Elixir and Pixie Dust that were traded during yard hours, and found his daily schedule of heaving buckets and scrubbing tiles to be exercise enough. Spending two hours in the close company of sixteen other inmates, all of whom were older than him, was not a prospect he enjoyed.
Hammond, as always, immersed himself in his newspaper immediately, fully prepared not to look up once. Draco supposed that the Auror took a cut of the profits, or gained some other advantage from turning a blind eye; otherwise, Hammond would never pass up on an opportunity to hex inmates.
His reasons didn't matter; for Draco, all it meant was two hours of being fully alert, keeping his head down and melting into the walls as well as he could. He never spoke to anyone if he could help it. A few times, another inmate had approached him, and not all of them seemed to have sinister intentions. An old man had wanted to share a piece of bread and stories about his grandchildren; another one, only a few years older than Draco, had scratched something like a chessboard into the stone tiles and wanted Draco to join him in a game.
Draco always went away without a word. There was a risk in getting attached to anyone; they could turn against you, and in a place like Azkaban, there were no friends, not past a certain point. As one of the youngest inmates, he'd be a fool to think otherwise.
He always kept an eye on the groups. Loners could be a problem, but mostly they wanted to keep out of trouble, like he himself did. Business was conducted in groups or in pairs, strategically close to others so that incriminating contraband could be ditched quickly if an Auror approached. Draco had seen this happen; suddenly the groups dispersed as if they'd Disapparated on the spot, and it was impossible for the Auror to determine just who had dropped the flask, the parchment bag or the make-shift weapon. Sometimes, an unlucky inmate was thrown under the bus by his mates, only to be dragged off to his cell for a brutal whipping. It was one of the reasons why Draco had decided early on that he couldn't afford any 'friends' in prison.
Of course, if one of the groups decided to target you, keeping an eye on them made little difference – not in an enclosed yard with no escape routes. Draco noticed early on that he was being watched; the three men weren't exactly subtle about it, and there was no need for them to be. Their names escaped him, but he knew who they were; everyone did. The tall, bald one with the eye patch had cornered the market on Pixie Dust; the other two beat up anyone who missed a payment or tried to start their own trade. Draco had never spoken to any of them, but he had observed their weekly 'negotiations' in the yard often enough. Father would have appreciated their business sense, if not necessarily their crude methods.
He managed to escape them for the better part of an hour, ducking away whenever they approached. Eventually, however, they had him backed into a corner; Eye-Patch standing in front of him, the two goons hulking behind his shoulders, making any escape impossible.
"You're that boy who cleans the floors," Eye-Patch drawled.
Draco said nothing.
"Cleans the floors and pulls drowned rats out of the loos," Eye-Patch continued, grinning. Goon No. 1 chuckled stupidly.
"That was once," Draco said before he could stop himself. It had only happened once, but Hammond had made him carry the dead rat through the entire cell block to the incinerator, much to the amusement of every inmate on Level 2.
"Kept it as a pet, did you? Something to cuddle up to at night. Or did you have yourself a nice little rat sandwich?"
Both goons guffawed this time.
"I put it in with your mum's knickers," Draco replied, because apparently, he had an imminent death wish, after all. "What do you want?"
Eye-Patch actually laughed. "You're not such a pussy after all, Rat Boy. And here I was thinking Hammond bent you over the desk in his office every night, pretty boy like you. He certainly likes hexing your arse."
Fear pooled hot and heavy in his stomach. "Fuck off."
Eye-Patch laughed again. "Don't worry, Rat Boy, I've better taste than that. Who knows what I might catch from your mangy arse. I want you to do a job for me."
"What kind of job?" Draco asked, although he already knew.
"You get around in here, don't you?" The man leered and winked, just to make sure Draco caught the oh-so-subtle double entendre. "You get around, and I need my PD delivered on time. Happy customers and all that. Might let you have a pinch or two if you do a good job."
It was, Draco supposed, the kind of offer you couldn't refuse. It was also another ten years added to his sentence if he was caught. And he would be. All drug mules were, sooner or later. People like Eye-Patch made sure not to use the same runners for too long, lest they became a liability for knowing too much.
"No," he said. "I'm not interested."
"Oh no," Eye-Patch glanced at his goons. "He's not interested. Isn't that a crying shame. The thing is, I don't remember asking if you were. Do you, boys?"
"No," Goon No. 2 said. "You didn't ask, boss. You didn't ask if he was interested."
"So," Eye-Patch said, turning back to Draco. "Your first pick-up is on shower day. Behind the cracked tile in the corner, next to the broken tap. Delivery for cell number 13. No later than Wednesday, you hear me?"
"I'm not doing it." He had really lost his mind, it seemed, or perhaps he was channeling Harry Potter at his worst, talking back to one of the drug lords of Azkaban. "Leave me alone."
Eye-Patch sighed and rolled his remaining eye, which was rather a gruesome sight. "Carlson," he said, sounding bored.
At first, Draco didn't know what he was talking about. Then, Goon No. 1 stepped forward with a speed belied by his size, pulling back his large fist. Draco tried to duck away, but it was too late. There was a dull crack, followed by blinding, mind-numbing pain. Draco stumbled, one hand clutching his broken nose. His face felt warm and slippery with blood.
Eye-Patch's voice seemed to come from far away. "Still not interested, Rat Boy? Carlson here doesn't mind, do you Carlson?"
Carlson grunted something in reply. Draco's hearing and vision were blurred, but his reflexes hadn't suffered. When the goon drew back again for another punch, he ducked to one side. This time Carlson missed, stumbling forward and flailing to catch himself before he fell. It was only a second, but it was enough. In a movement that had become second nature to him over the last weeks, Draco slid the spoon out of his sleeve and drove the sharp end into Carlson's biceps.
The man howled, grabbing at his arm. "He's got a knife, boss!"
"Fuck!"
Draco tried to slip out of their grip, but Goon No. 2 and Eye-Patch shoved him against the wall, an arm pushing down on his throat and cutting off his breath.
"You'll pay for that one, Rat Boy! Gimme that!"
Through a haze, Draco saw Eye-Patch ripping the spoon out of Carlson's arm. The amount of blood was impressive, as was the way it squirted from the injury, drops of red filling his vision like rain.
He was going to die. He knew it, seeing the spoon clutched in Eye-Patch's hand, its sharpened handle dripping once again with blood. He should have thrown it away, but maybe that had never been an option.
Maybe, Draco thought as the blade pierced the skin between his ribs, death had been an inevitability ever since he had picked the bloody thing up off the floor in Crankshaw's cell.