In a loop of darkness
Chapter 1: One could have thing the world would be better…
Draco Malfoy considered himself anything but happy. The fifteen first years of his life had been passable: he had a proud father, a loving mother, a big house and the only shadow in the painting was the existence of Potter. Foolish of him to think it would last.
When his father had been sent to Azkaban, it had been up to him to bear and support the Malfoy name. His mother had taken him to meet the Master for the new heir to pledge allegiance. But the dark lord hadn't been what Draco had imagined him to be. He wasn't a grand wizard warrior, noble and cunning; the man was half-dead, gnawed by evil and a thirst for revenge.
Draco had realised that this very incarnation was his probable future since he loved darkness and hated Potter with a fury… But he didn't want to resemble the dark lord. He dreamt of a life in which he was feared and respected, in which he would do as he desired and nothing more. Death and torture weren't in his plans. To make fun of muggleborns by frightening them with death, he could, but commit cold-blooded murder was too much for him. But it wasn't his choice to make. Severus Snape was put in charge of teaching him how to be proper death-eater material.
He had always liked his Head of House. The man favoured Slytherins and hated Gryffindors as much as his students. Snape was a pureblood of a good family, a spy for the dark lord, the perfect example. But it happened that truth isn't always what you see. Since Lucius was in prison, Snape never let go of an occasion to put the man down. Malfoy hadn't been there for his Master, Malfoy hadn't taught his son the dark arts correctly; rumours that Draco's father had wanted to betray the dark lord started to spread. Draco denied them, but he couldn't stop people from murmuring. Some months later, Lucius was found murdered in his cell.
Draco was beginning to understand that, despite all appearance, Snape had never remotely appreciated his father. Quite the contrary. But the man was now dead, and the Potions Master directed his hatred toward the wife. Narcissa rarely took part in death-eaters' activities; she wasn't fond of them. Still, she was expected to live up to her husband's name and did a good job of it, joining her sister Bellatrix during raids. Draco's life was back in order.
But in his seventh year, it appeared that blood, killings, tortures and whatever insanity the dark lord invented to break his supporters were too much for Narcissa's resistance. She had protected her son the best she could, but it had been too much. She committed suicide after the New Year's festivities. Draco found her body broken on the ground.
What Snape preferred to teach him above all the rest was to fight the Cruciatus. Not that anyone could, but Draco's cries and screams reminded him of his own, when Lucius had trained him. Draco had considered denouncing the man to the aurors, but aurors hated him more than they hated Snape and would have arrested both of them for practising dark arts. And outside of the castle, Draco would be sure to get killed by death-eaters.
Seventh year came to an end. Draco feared the outside just as he feared remaining in Hogwarts with the Potions teacher and mates that accused his family of betrayal. He had wanted to go to Dumbledore on many occasions, but the headmaster had either been occupied with Potter and had refused to hear anyone else or Snape had been at his side. And in no way could Draco have made his move with a death-eater present. He was forced to leave the school, having not resolved his problem.
Dumbledore was being spied on, that Draco knew for sure, just as he was aware of eyes on him, cataloguing each of his moves, preventing him from running away. He couldn't send the headmaster a letter. He'd be killed before it even reached the old man. On his eighteenth birthday, Snape came and accompanied him to be marked. The feeling of the tattoo on his arm was worse than all the Cruciatus he had been put under. His forearm seemed to burn from the inside; it was like a leash that bound him to the dark lord. Unfortunately for Draco, he wasn't an Occlumens and had never been taught to hide his thoughts from one. Voldemort was, though, and it didn't take long for him to notice that his new recruit was far from willing. When Draco failed in performing the Avada Kedavra on a muggle baby, and thought of nothing else than run to Dumbledore, he was condemned.
The feeling of the whip on his bare flesh, of the coldness of his cell's floor under his body, of the rivers of blood that poured from his thighs became his share of daily activities. His whole life now resumed in a three by three room, no window, a door that let no light pass, four walls, and a floor. He occupied his free time with imagining he was dead. But he had always been timorous and the remembrance of his mother's unmoving body kept him from acting on it.
How many years passed this way? Was there someone outside that wondered where the Malfoy heir had disappeared? Draco had stopped hoping.
The war ended. Voldemort was destroyed, death-eaters arrested. Draco discovered that he hadn't been the only one locked in a cell for what had been four years: many young Slytherins hadn't been able to follow the madness of their parents. But nobody cared for the wounds and blood and dust that covered their bodies: they were death-eaters. Some were sent to Azkaban along with actual murderers, others were offered to heroes of the war as compensation for their lost life. Draco was given to Snape. The man had asked for him. And the young man had no illusion as to what and why the Potions master wanted him.
Why hadn't the man been taken by aurors? Because he had been a traitor from the beginning. Why hadn't he helped Draco and the Slytherins? He could have saved them from the dark lord, from their fate. He hadn't cared. Dumbledore hadn't either. No one had looked twice at them. Their crime was being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time. They were accused of having not fought their parents' education.
Snape had no love for the whip, but he was brutal and rough, more than the average death-eater had been. He used his bare hands. During his isolated years, Draco's hair had grown long, and Snape took pleasure in dragging the young man to his bed by it. It reminded him more of Lucius, of the hatred he hadn't been allowed to assuage. Draco ended beaten up, not able to stand, barely breathing.
He was tired of life, yet he still had no bravery to end it. Potter sometimes visited. He had obviously reconciled with a man he previously hated. That wasn't Draco's case. Bellatrix had killed herself during the final battle to avoid being captured, taking away Potter's chance to avenge his godfather's death. The woman's nephew would pay in her place. Potter didn't come for sex but for blood.
Many did actually. They visited Snape for talk then visited Draco to put their minds at ease with the dead ones of their families. Such acts weren't common knowledge in the wizarding world but those who performed them knew each other. And they were an awful lot. The others suspected but had no idea of what was truly taking place not that far away from them. Not that they cared much. Who cared for death-eaters and their children?
When Snape had begun calling him Lucius on a daily basis, Draco had thought the man's sanity was failing. Each night, he had called the young one to his bed and reproached him for what his father had apparently done. What Draco had understood later was that Snape was in perfect control of all his mental capacities and trying to get Draco to be Lucius in order to be liberated from his own past.
Draco wondered if his past roommates were still alive. He had long resented them for treating him as they had during his seventh year, but their actions now seemed so faint and trivial that he would be genuinely pleased to see one of them, if only for the company of someone that wouldn't consider him a slave. He knew that Crabbe and Goyle had been sent to prison and that Zabini had been chosen by an auror, but that was all information he had.
When Snape woke up on his good side, he took Draco out with him to shop for potions ingredients. They had to walk through Diagon Alley. Passers-by eyed Draco with disgust and thanked the skies that there had been good and brave people to stop these madmen that murdered and killed young children; parents showed him to their offspring as the bad example, the monster; some insulted him to his face. None touched him. They later came to Snape's for that. One day, a man hadn't known there was a place in which he could privately let go of his rage and had punched Draco. With a dark look, Snape had dared him to flinch under the blow.
The man didn't like to see the scars on Draco's back, the ones that had been made by death-eaters. He enjoyed hurting perfect skin for Lucius had never been anything but perfect. That was the only thing Draco was allowed to do in his spare time; that meant when he wasn't getting raped or beaten up, he would prepare concealing potions in order to camouflage the marks.
On this day, in some hours, when night fell, Draco would be twenty-five. He would have spent exactly seven years in captivity and suffering. Seven years. It seemed like yesterday when his father had been taken to Azkaban. He had long given up the hope that someone would ever come for him. His nerves were beginning to tighten, his mind to give in to madness. Tears fell down his eyes, and he turned toward the clouds that hid the half-moon. Why was he treated this way? What had he done? What did they reproach him with that was the truth? How did some bickering when he was a child deserve such a fate! Voldemort had been mad, but the ones that now directed the wizarding world weren't any better if they could let such things happen.
And as he fell asleep on the floor, naked, too exhausted by Snape's violating him to move, he didn't know that, through the open window, Wind had heard his complaints.
End of the Chapter One.
