Chapter: 2- Awakening
Disclaimer: Own nothin', makin' no money.
A/N: LOL, funny how I got almost the same response from all of you. "Interesting." LOL. Well, my pretties, it's about to get even more, "interesting." Thanks for all of your reviews!
Warnings: I forgot to mention- Slash in future chapters. If that's not your cuppa…sorry? What else… Um… Well, the entire idea is just nuts. So… sorry?
Draco gasped, his eyes snapping open. Something oddly thick was slithering down his throat, and it left a raw and tender feeling in its wake. His vision was fuzzy, shapes and colors blurring into each other, and Draco squeezed them tightly shut, refusing to look around. Someone laid a hand on his shoulder. Draco flinched, but the hand was warm. Not burning hot, but humanly warm, pulsing with life.
"Mr. Malfoy?" A calm voice invaded his thoughts. "Draco? Come on Draco, open your eyes."
Draco hesitated, but, finally, it was the hesitant touch of another living hand that made up his mind. Slowly opening his eyes, the first thing that jumped out at him was a violent red. It took the boy a few more seconds to identify the boy beside him with a name.
"Weasley?"
The redhead sucked in a breath, his fingers jumping away from Draco's shoulder. His pulse was practically thumping out of his skin. This dazzled, calm, person in the cot couldn't be the thrashing wild thing he'd struggled to restrain. Malfoy couldn't be…just…back, after all of that.
Draco tried to connect that name with a set of memories, momentarily sliding past the familiar feelings of condescension and jealousy. There was something not right about this room, wasn't there someone else? "Where's Potter?"
"Me? Oh-um… here?" Harry moved into Draco's line of vision. His face was crimson.
"Do you feel alright, Mr. Malfoy?" Pomfrey interrupted, looking concerned.
Draco, honestly, wasn't very sure about how he was feeling. He chose to ignore her question. Instead, he centered his full attention on the old man standing before him. Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, he identified. For some reason unknown, he immediately connected the figure with the calm voice that had called him back to reality.
"Sir," he said dazedly, nodding with respect. Images swam in front of his eyes, and he squeezed them shut. Colors twirled beneath his eyelids, but they didn't rise to claim him. Somehow, Draco knew that he was safe. For now. It occurred to him that something very wrong was going on. What happened to the ocean? Did this all really start with that stupid daydream? Draco shuddered. No, not a daydream. It was much, much too real to be only that. Why was Potter here? Wasn't Potter the one who'd woken him up? Why was Weasley here? He was in the Hospital Wing, right? How did he get here? What was wrong with him? Why was the Headmaster here? What had awoken him? Who was the creature? What was going on?
Draco opened his mouth, fully prepared to bombard his audience with peels of inquiries, but Dumbledore beat him to the mark.
"Can you remember anything, Mr. Malfoy?" he asked, barely restrained urgency shining behind his half-moon glasses.
He gazed solemnly at the Headmaster before answering. "Yes."
"How much?"
"…Everything."
"Do know what's happening?"
"I assume that you do?"
"I do."
"…Well?" Draco scowled, fisting his sheets in frustration, "What is it? What the fuck is going on here!"
Pomfrey gasped. Dumbledore winced. Harry blushed more deeply. Weasley grinned.
"Language, Mr. Malfoy, all will be explained in due time."
"Due time? What kind of-"
"Do you hurt, physically, at all, Mr. Malfoy?"
"…No."
"Good, do you think that you can keep awake?"
"Of course!"
"Very good. In that case, I must regretfully ask this room to clear. I have pressing matters to discuss with Mr. Malfoy."
The room was still for moment, and it took a few more moments for the Headmaster's order to sink in. When it did, the Hospital Wing cleared as quickly as one might think molasses does from a jar. When, finally, the double doors had swung shut behind Weasley and Potter, and a grumbling Pomfrey had retreated to her study, Dumbledore took out his wand and cast a powerful privacy spell on the room. Draco shifted nervously. Whatever this was, it had to be big. Draco was pretty sure that that wasn't a good thing.
"Now, Mr. Malfoy, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you," Dumbledore settled into the chair that Weasley had vacated. "I've made what I think to be a fairly accurate assumption. I'm not going to tell you what that is, because I wouldn't want you to do any undo panicking. Now, if you would be so kind, would you please tell me what happened this afternoon?"
Draco tried desperately to train his features into his usual mask of ice, but his body wouldn't comply. He felt uneasy, humiliated, and shy all at once, and he didn't like it one bit. He didn't know if he should be recounting such an embarrassing episode to Dumbledore, of all people, and he wasn't sure that if he did tell Dumbledore, that the old man would know what to do. Wasn't this the man who'd managed to drag a formerly great school's name through the political mud? Wasn't "Dumbledore" synonymous with, "muggle lover?" How could he, son of Lucius Malfoy, trust a man who was not-so subtly undermining everything the Malfoys stood for and believed in, everything he was taught was right? Did it really matter anymore? Draco repressed a groan, running a hand roughly through his hair. Nothing made sense anymore.
"Mr. Malfoy?" Dumbledore's voice dripped with patience, "Draco, do you want to tell me?"
"No." Draco snapped, glaring at the man. Dumbledore only smiled. That's what did it. Draco melted, sighing deeply. "But I will."
"I won't interrupt you."
"Whatever," Draco sighed again, and prepared himself for a recount of this afternoon's adventures, pointedly excluding his conversations with the Golden Trio, and the sweater on Christmas morning.
"Well, Mr.Malfoy, that is intriguing…" Dumbledore spoke with a tone of delicacy, as if he expected that one wrong tip in infliction could send the distraught teenager into another fit. Hell, for all Draco knew, that could be true.
"So do you know what's wrong with me?" He asked impatiently.
"Yes."
"…Well?"
"You have an overactive imagination, Mr. Malfoy."
"…Excuse me?" Draco's voice was laced with ice, unknowingly mimicking a tone that his father favored when speaking with those he considered insulting or dangerous.
"You have a wildly overactive imagination," Dumbledore looked uncommonly solemn. "I'm afraid that is truly your downfall."
"What in the name of-"
"Have you ever heard of something called the Dementor Effect?"
Draco's jaw worked, but no sound was forthcoming. What was this man on? "N-no, but what does that-"
"About one hundred years ago a man named Jerahd Syrahk was lost in the South American Amazon. Fifteen years later, his body was found in an exquisitely built shelter in the canopy. There wasn't a mark on him. After a muggle autopsy it was determined that some kind of slow-acting poison had paralyzed him, but he'd actually died of starvation. The magical community acknowledged it as a dementor attack. Jerahd exhibited the same symptoms as some one who'd been subjected to the kiss. This was an important discovery, for, until then, it was believed that dementors only existed on the European continent. Another wizard, by the name of William Betters, headed a campaign into the Amazon jungle to find the dementors he believed to be residing there. They never found any dementors, but there was a constant presence of other dark creatures and the stink of ancient blood magic. Six months after he landed in South America, Mr. William Betters returned to Britain. Seventeen out of his crew of seventy-five returned in a conscience state. William himself suffered from chronic fits and reoccurring delusions. When he was asked to describe these episodes, all he would say is that his memories had become nightmares. His daydreams had become cages, and his happiness had slowly and steadily been creeping in on him. William Betters fell into catatonia three months later. The so-called Amazon Dementors were never found. Does any of this sound familiar, Draco?"
Draco was silent, staring at his hands. Thoughts raced through his mind so quickly he couldn't differentiate one idea from another speeding bullet of information. "What are you saying, sir?" Draco almost jumped at the sound of his own voice. It was calm, icy, perfectly composed. Damn his training. For the first time in his life, he wished he could sound shocked, terrified, or even helpless if that's what it meant to feel.
"I'm saying, Mr. Malfoy, that there is an extremely rare, extremely picky, virus out there that feeds on persons in magical community who have a constant, or almost constant, exposure to the dark arts. Dark magic leaves a residue on one's psyche, building up until a cloud of shadow waits in one's mind, feeding on all your happy thoughts and feelings until there's nothing left but that cloud."
"What about Potter? Shouldn't he be dead by now?"
Dumbledore chuckled without humor. "I'm afraid that this virus is extremely choosy when it comes to its victims. An overly active imagination, Mr. Malfoy, that's why it effects you. The Dementor Effect latches onto people who have a psychological addiction to happiness, these are usually people who have very little of the real stuff. They have make up their good things, usually in the form of daydreams or art. Can you imagine that, Draco? What a feast a dementor would have on a psyche like that? A never-ending supply of bright emotion, constantly being created to replace reality. Mr. Potter isn't effected because, quite literally, he has friends. He has a constant input of good will, while you have just the opposite: a constant input of malevolence and an output of artificial bliss. Almost poetic, isn't it?"
"No," Said Draco immediately. There was nothing beautiful or poetic about this. "It sounds positively horrible, Headmaster, but how does that explain these delusions or…'fits'? Shouldn't daydreams and a hungry cloud of dementor balance eachother out?"
"Ah, yes, they should, in theory. But the truth is, no one can be satisfied with pretend. It's like psychological junk food. It'll take the edge of your hunger, but it won't make you stronger. And when the thin layer of contentment is ripped, the cloud comes flooding through. Bad memories…Moments of despair…Even a more complicated image can be let in when these lapses occur. Eventually, a person's mind becomes 'water-logged' and the dark starts eating at the essence of one's soul. By that time, that person's as good as dead. It's the point of no return, and the eventual result is an empty bag of flesh, blood, and bones devoid of a soul."
Draco grimaced, closing his eyes, shaking his head in denial. No. This wasn't happening. Couldn't be happening. Nothing that wrong could happen to him. He wasn't even sad, he had plenty of happiness in his life! Dumbledore was mad, that was the only explanation…he was mad…
"No!" Draco denied, shaking his head so hard he could almost hear his brain squishing against the sides of his skull. "No, it's not true. You're wrong, this isn't happening. You're wrong! You're wrong!"
"Mr. Malfoy, it can be cured, I didn't mean to frighten you, I didn't think you'd want to soften the truth. There are ways-"
"I don't care!" Draco shouted, his cool voice finally shattering, and his eyes glassing over with unshed tears. "I don't care! It doesn't matter! You're wrong!"
"Draco-"
"Get out!"
"Mr. Malfoy-"
"Get out! Get out! Get out!" His voice broke on the last word, and he lowered his head to his hands, sobbing. "Get out…" he choked out weakly.
Albus Dumbledore looked on with sympathy, but he didn't move to touch the boy. Quietly, without ceremony, he rose from his seat.
"My door is open, it's your move. The password is Sarsaparilla…" Dumbledore paused by the door to the hospital wing. "Don't hesitate. We don't have the time."
Draco didn't respond. He couldn't respond. Nothing was as it should be. Nothing, nothing, nothing….
