By Kay
Disclaimer: I don't own HP. If I did, there would be a lot more leather involved. Hmmm, it's probably for the best, then…
Author's Notes: H/D implications, though fairly light. Takes place in their seventh year, upon the idea that Draco is now a Death Eater (or at least close to one), and has just escaped from some situation... (shrugs) Make what you will of it. There's a lot left open in this story for you to decide-- fill in the blanks. Enjoy the gradually Crazy!Draco. Someone give me a cookie with cranberries in it. :D
He's been walking for ages, but Hogwarts isn't getting any closer.
Part of Draco knows that if he stops, if he sits down and thinks about what he's doing, he's not going to make it. Everything in the past week has passed in a blur, a terrifying and life-changing blur that melded in front of his eyes too quickly to sort it out. If he tries to rest for more than a few minutes, catches more than an hour or so of sleep every so often, he's going to realize what a stupid thing he's done. What a stupid, idiot, unSlytherin thing he's done.
By the second day, he's keeping lists in his brain of how miserable he is, just to keep his mind off of everything else. The sun rises and sets, and he keeps moving. Just keeps putting one foot in front of the other.
There is mud all the way up his shins. His robes are plastered with it, sticking messily to his pale skin from the sweat and long-dried blood. It crusts across his ankles, down his calves, and his boots are so full of the proof of his weak humanity that they're as heavy as iron weights. There is a gaping hole of air between his fingers where his wand would be, and he feels the loss almost as keenly as if it were a limb. It's probably back with them now.
His hair hangs in his face in dirty white tangles, glued to his cheekbones. His lip is still sore. The taste of sour river water is still lingering in his mouth, and the cuts on his soft fingers are stinging from the touch of it. His collarbone is chilly from the open air, and he's stopped grumbling to himself sometime around midday.
He doesn't even know where Hogwarts is, directly. It has charms. He knows that. He wouldn't be able to see it, even should he somehow chance upon it—but there's a very good chance that it's this way, and that's where he's going. He'll think about the rest once he's there… or once he's passed it.
Truthfully, he just wants to be somewhere safe. He's never slept in the woods before now, and the sounds come from everywhere except himself.
His father is a garish streak of white in a red, red world.
He wants to look away. Wants to back out of the room, far away from the ugly, hideous thing prone on the plush carpeting that his mother was so fond of, but his legs won't work. They're as limp as his lungs are, barely breathing.
'Draco..' it looks up. It looks up at him, and the eyes are not the stern but protective ones he remembers. 'Draco, promise me…'
He opens his mouth.
'Promise me you will—'
He opens his mouth, and someone is screaming.
He only sleeps for an hour at a time, randomly interspersed through the days and nights. That way, it's harder to dream. Harder to remember. And when he's stumbling through the darkness, hands reaching blindly only to fall upon another shrub of thorns, or the empty air beyond him, everything is erased from his mind.
Hogwarts, he urges himself. Sanctuary.
And although he's ceased to mutter darkly to himself, he still can't stop thinking, can't stop his brain from racing faster and faster. He fills its hunger by cursing the flies that buzz around his cuts, attracted by the metallic and sweet scent of blood. He considers the edibility of various mushrooms (and wishes he'd paid more attention in Herbology, no matter how swishy a class it was). Through it all, always, are the frantic thoughts of what he will do when he finally reaches his destination.
Hogwarts will not open its arms to him willingly. Not anymore.
He still puts one foot in front of the other, though, even if he's not sure why.
"They might take me back," Draco says in the stillness. His voice is hoarse, raspy with disuse and parched tongue. "They might… forgiveness… Master."
But it's only because his stomach is aching with emptiness that he considers it, and his feet still move onward.
It's getting harder to trudge along.
When he was eight, his father gave him a compass. It was golden-edged and beautiful, a masterpiece of craftsmanship, and the letters of North and South were onyx laced with silver veins. It must have cost a fortune. He couldn't wait to start using it, so convinced it would do all the work for him.
He purposefully made himself lost in the gardens. When he was unable to find his way out, he threw it at a tree in a fit of rage. The glass plate shattered on the ground, and he left there in the dirt. Father never asked about it again. It was gone the next time he came around.
When he walks, Draco's slim hand keeps clenching the air, remembering the feel of it. But he tries not to think about that, either, and reminds himself that following the river is as useful, if not as beautiful, as such a thing.
It doesn't help.
The trees all look the same. The very air smells the same—crisp and natural, utterly foreign, and Draco has never wanted to see Hogwarts so badly in his life. Or anything, really.
He slips. Hits the ground, hands out, with a cry ripped from his dry throat. Making the sound hurts more than the bleeding scrapes on his palm, or the bruised feeling of tenderness on the side of his head. He prods at it with shaking fingers, laying there in the mud and grass, staring up blurrily at a canopy of trees filtering through the sky.
The scent of blood is like a tang to his senses—it makes him think of Pomphrey and her sweet medicines, the disinfectant odor he hates so much.
He would give a lot to have it now.
He doesn't know if they're chasing him, but he tries not to think about that.
He can't keep track of the days without thinking, 'I'll never make it.' So he stops. He just stops. It's frighteningly simple.
The silence grows so loudly in his ears that he thinks he's going mad. The course has not gotten less wild—part of him, dark and deep inside his heaving chest, wonders if he's even going the right way. Why it even matters.
He eats the mushrooms. Doesn't care if they're poisoned. There's been a gaping, bleeding raw hole in his world for the past days that exceeds any toxin that nature can give him. The fungus disappears, almost along with half of his fingers, and his teeth scrape against the blunt edges of his nails.
He wonders if it's possible to feel savage and calm at the same time. And then he laughs, chokingly, because he remembers to be a Malfoy.
'You don't have to do this,' Harry Potter said. His green eyes are nearly as black as the ink stains on his elbows. 'You have a choice.'
'There was never a choice, Potter.' And although it's the truth, it burns, scorches his tongue just by its utterance. 'Leave me alone, you fucking saint.'
The disgust on the boy's face makes him feel nothing.
If Hogwarts doesn't let him in, Draco thinks wildly, if they don't let him in—
He stumbles against a tree, scratchy breath gasping in his lungs. Feels the rough bark under his new callused hands. Takes more deep gulps of air.
They can't be chasing him. But they'll find him, won't they? Eventually. Always eventually. Even at Hogwarts, he'll have no place to hide.
But there's nothing else to do. Keep walking. That's all. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, and—
'Maybe Potter will help me,' Draco thinks then, and is surprised at the lack of hatred or anger involved. All he can remember is that he's hungry.
'Potter,' is what he'll say. 'Potter, you have to help me. It's your duty as the good man in all of this to make sure we're safe. So help me convince them to let me in. Convince them to hide me.'
No, that wouldn't work.
'Help me, Potter,' Draco thinks dully. 'They'll kill me. My father isn't… you don't have to worry about him anymore. I'm not a traitor. I don't want anything but shelter. I know I've done things… I know what I've…'
Not that, either.
'I've been stupid and a prat to you in the past. I'm sorry.'
Another step in the mud, boots squelching.
'Forgive me. Save me. You're a hero, aren't you?'
Another one; he fumbles with branches to stop swaying back and forth.
'I'll hex you to hell and back if you don't back me up, Potter.'
He laughs sharply, bitingly; it's an ugly sound. The moss has overtaken so much of the river that he no longer cares to drink from it, even as desperate as he is. Though he stares at it sometimes and wonders.
'I'll do anything you want. I have money. Influence. What do you want, Potter? They won't believe anyone less than the Boy Who Lived himself that I really won't betray anyone. That I'm worth saving. That they shouldn't just turn me over to the Dementors. I need your help.'
But that doesn't sound right, either.
'Please,' is what he finally decides on. It sounds sincere. It sounds beautiful.
When night falls, he trips again. His head is ringing with the force of the impact, and when he pushes against his skull, sparks go off in his eyes. The forest is no longer a threat, but a mere blur to his gaze—it shifts continually in front of him.
He cries for a bit. Doesn't even feel bad about it, being a Malfoy and all.
When he's finished, he rises from his hunched crouch, wipes his faces vigorously with his robe hem, and sniffles a bit. The world isn't any clearer, but he remembers, 'Please,' very vividly. That's all that's important. All he needs.
His eyes are swollen red from sobbing, but there is no mirror, and it does not matter.
He doesn't know how long it's been. His sleeves are in tatters. His boots are worn down to the sole, nearly scrubbed past to the toe. His hair has been pulled back with a tattered piece of his hemline, drawn tight and scraggily falling behind his shoulder blades. He's never felt so filthy.
The mushrooms are gone now. He eats grass, berries, and samples the leaves of some trees tentatively. But he won't touch the grubs.
'Someday you'll regret this,' Harry says to him. He likes to show up in his dreams now. He's waiting on the other side of a deep, endless gorge.
'I already do,' is what Draco replies.
He tries not to grow alarmed when he starts seeing Harry Potter beside him.
It started as flashes from the corner of his eyes. Pieces of color in an otherwise black and green world. Emerald amongst the timbers. Then it became a distorted image of him traveling beside Draco in the river, wavering with the water's gentle movements—but he couldn't tell if the mirage was smiling or frowning at him.
Then he began to materialize as a foggy outline, simply staring at Draco.
Draco is terrified. He throws sticks at it. It comes back.
His stomach hurts, however, and the pangs are biting. The cramps sting. He smushes grass together with a rock, slathering the paste on his fingers and licking it away. Has no idea if it's safe, but that hasn't mattered for days. Harry Potter That Isn't Potter keeps watching him carefully.
Finally, as he sucks the last of it off his fingers, he looks at the apparition. "Hullo," he says.
"I wasn't planning on it happening this way," he says ruefully, shoving aside some bushes. "I was going to follow in Father's footsteps."
Next to him, Potter is smiling, humoring him.
"Except they killed him, you know. And mother wasn't coming back."
While Draco struggles his way through the brush, his friend glides silently behind him, always at his back.
"And Father told me to remain true to my name. I didn't know what to say." He pauses for a moment, eyes looking clearer and more thoughtful than they had for hours. "You know, this is my answer."
Harry says nothing, but Draco thinks he understands.
"You're such a bastard," he pants into the cold air, feeling sweat gather on his forehead. It's been uphill for the past mile or so. Eighty-three trees. He's been counting today. "You always were."
Harry is cheating—he floats above the rough terrain.
"I was going to be your friend back in our first year, you know," the blond huffs, dragging a hand through his wayward hair. It hangs in clumps now, lifeless and dull. "I was going to… show you everything. Give you my hand."
Through the glimmer of sunlight from above, Draco keeps following the vague outline of his only companion. He isn't sure he's going to Hogwarts anymore, but somehow it doesn't matter.
The night comes again. It always does. It is constant in that way, much as to the manner in which Harry Potter stays with him now, every minute.
Draco collapses against a trunk, sinking down to the soft earth with a loan moan. His stomach is in knots; his knees are quavering. Every heave he gives is dry, but the burn of his face and unfocused eyes make it seem as though he's purging himself of the entire world. Everything he's done wrong, everything he's inhaled that's been vile, the toxin of his own identity.
Beside him, Harry says, 'You deserve this.'
"You're very fortunate," Dumbledore is saying. His words are a buzzing in Draco's ears as he stares on blindly ahead. "If they hadn't found you as quickly as they did…"
It feels strange to sit in a chair. Stranger to feel the clean press of fabric on his sensitive skin, or the woven texture of the bandages wound across his temple and hands. He's still having trouble seeing straight.
He's warm. He thought he'd never be warm again.
"But you must understand, Mr. Malfoy… we cannot keep you here for very long," the old fool is softly admonishing, watching him with an unreadable expression past his moon-shaped spectacles. "We can only offer a haven for so long, and there's your past record... You're a wanted man. And although your offer of information is tempting—"
"Potter," Draco mumbles. He can't think. Can't breath. "Get Potter."
"Mr. Malfoy—"
"Get him here," Draco says with weeks worth of walking and aching shins. With a lifetime of regrets, a hundred nightmares, and all the mud of the world that once embraced him.
After a long moment of staring, Dumbledore reaches out with a long, gnarled finger and presses a button.
Harry Potter hasn't changed much at all.
His eyes are still the darkest shade of green that Draco's ever seen, heavy with regrets and contempt and grim determination. His scar sticks out like a sore thumb—his hair barely covers it, almost as tousled as the blond's own locks. He's skinny and long, and his shoulders stretch out under the fabric of his robes as though he needs new ones, and seventh year has done a lot to make him taller than before.
The corners of his mouth are the same. No lines have been formed from smiling.
And before he can think about it—because there can be no more thinking, no more acknowledgment of anything but this—Draco is up on his sore feet, waddling across a forest of plush carpet, sinking deep to the floor, on his knees, in front of his enemy, in front of the Boy Who Lived, and the hands that catch his shoulders almost automatically are warm and strong and shocked.
And all the pretty words and justification fall away, along with the begging, and the politeness and sincerity, and Draco clings to his robes. Clings to him. Down his face, scorching trails of fire burn through his cheekbones and lips, his mouth clogged with the dampness and salt of it, choking. He opens his mouth again to say the word he's practiced for so long.
"Harry," is what he says instead.
The man is frozen. Staring down in transfixed horror.
"Harry," is what he says again, desperately, and other hands drag him far away.
He doesn't know where they are keeping him. It's dark. The absence of light is nothing to a Malfoy, of course, but the shadows that creep across the corners of the room taunt him. They show him illusions, disrealities, concepts but never a whole. They twist along his ankles and ribcage, touching lightly upon his skin.
Draco doesn't count the days here, either.
It's only a matter of time before they come for him. It doesn't matter what anymore. He tries not to think about it. It's harder to run away when he's not in a forest, though. Much harder than he imagined.
'You deserve this,' Harry says at his side, looking ghostly in the shatterings of moonlight through the unbreakable window. 'What did you want in the end? Your pride? Your freedom? Did you want to be free? Do you want me to set you free? What do you want from me?'
For a long time, Draco sits there with his hand clutched in his hands, lips parted aimlessly. His gray eyes are clouded.
"Call me Draco," he finally says.
But Harry never answers.
.