Chapter 5 – Buried Alive By Love

Malfoy gestured to the barman and another fire whisky was pushed across to him, the barman threw him a quizzical expression, thinking that the NEWT exams must have got really bad if this guy was happy to drown himself in whisky. His bloodshot eyes reflected the state he was getting into but despite spending more than most customers did in a week he showed no sign of slowing.

Malfoy's thoughts were a whirl of depression and fear. He had never really supported Voldemort, not deep down at least and when Harry had defeated him he found himself happy that he would not have been forced into the Dark Arts as he knew he would have been, he would never have been able to conceal such a lie from the Dark Lord or his father. His Slytherin friends had already rejected him, mostly because he didn't engage in the slanderous discussion of Harry (something which he was usually the first to start) and mourn the loss of the Dark Lord the way the rest of them did, and of course some of them had their suspicious about Malfoy, which had spread around small groups within the Slytherin common room excluding him from every conversation, every discussion, to them he was a blood traitor and just as bad as the Weasleys, he just hoped his father didn't find out.

The thought of his father prompted another whisky by which time Malfoy was really beginning to feel the effects. A young wizard with dark hair took a seat at the bar and as he ordered he glanced over at Malfoy a glance which Malfoy returned with a smile, which he was pleased to realise didn't reflect the amount of alcohol he had drunk.

When Malfoy woke up the following morning he vaguely recalled the dark haired wizard and the intoxicating firewhisky but he knew something must have happened to land him here in the hospital wing. For a moment he cursed Madam Pomfrey, he was in the hospital wing and yet his head still felt as though it were being pounded upon by a couple of angry trolls. He groaned and tried to roll over, hoping to bury his head in his pillow, but instead he heard a piercing voice,

"Look at me, Draco." Malfoy opened one eye a fraction before the light overpowered him and he was forced to close it again, though he still saw that Severus Snape was standing at the bottom of the bed.

"Severus, he can't talk to you yet," he heard another voice say from the other side of him, it was female and he thought it sounded like Professor Black, though he didn't want to open his eyes again to confirm it. "He's probably still drunk from last night, I'd be surprised if he remembers anything at all."

"Sayaire," Severus said, Malfoy smirked, so he was right after all, though he couldn't figure out why Black would be sticking up for him, "Draco is my student, he is my responsibility and I shall deal with him in my way not yours, besides it was his idea to act with such recklessness and so I shall not oblige him by waiting for the effects to wear off before I speak to him."

He heard Sayaire slip off something and assumed that she had been sitting on the bed beside him, "Dumbledore was right though," she said from a distance, she must have been at the door ready to leave, "before you start punishing him for what he's done, maybe you should start with why he did it."

She slipped through the door, but ignoring her advice and that of the headmaster, Snape did not even bother inquire as to why Draco saw fit to get himself so drunk Madam Pomfrey practically had to pump the alcohol out of him when he had been found by Professor Black on her way from Hogsmeade after visiting her boyfriend there in a rather compromising position with a young wizard also drunk, who had been sent soundly on his way.

Snape stood at the end of the bed, barely caring that Malfoy could barely see him let alone understand him. He managed to pick up the odd words, 'disgrace,' 'disappointment' but the part that chilled Malfoy the most was when Snape told him, "Your father has been informed, he is on his way."

Lucius Malfoy arrived at exactly one o clock, by which time Malfoy's hangover was not cured, though a couple of black coffees from Professor's Black office had managed to restore him somewhat. She apparently understood what it was to crawl over the Hogwarts gates in a drunken haze and she had nothing but sympathy for him. To his surprise it was she who accompanied him to the office where he was to meet his father and it was she who lurked in the background as Lucius Malfoy appeared in the fireplace, his face a mask concealing any emotions he may feel towards his son yet his eyes betraying his fury. Professor Black had been told to leave though from the look of Malfoy's face he wanted nothing less than to be left with his father in this state.

By the evening every student had heard some variation of a rumour regarding Draco Malfoy getting drunk and sleeping with a male wizard in the Hogwarts grounds, of course only the young and gullible believed that Draco had actually slept with the man in question but there was no doubt that there had been some indiscretions between the two. There were rumours that Lucius Malfoy had visited, that Dumbledore had considered expulsion and that Malfoy had been attacked by a group of his old friends that couldn't believe what he had become.

Nobody knew the truth of course, the only ones who did were Malfoy, Professor Black who had passed the room where Malfoy met his father and taken great pleasure in causing Lucius Malfoy as much pain as possible as she removed his hands from his son's neck. Lucius had never meant to kill his son, there were a number of ways he could have done without resorting to brute strength, it was more a gesture than anything and of course Dumbledore who had spoken to both Black and Malfoy. He had had a discussion with Malfoy but expulsion was never considered, of course Dumbledore had understood Malfoy's drunken binge as a result of frustration, depression and fear and had advised discretion in the future and more appropriate outlets to vent emotions rather than drink, as to the other issue, Dumbledore had said that orientation had never and would never change the way a student be treated at Hogwarts and with that he had bid Malfoy good night as though nothing had changed in the world.

For Malfoy of course the world had changed, he had harboured this secret for months now and now had been kicked out of the boys dorms and forced to sleep on the sofas in the common room rather than share a bedroom with his former friends. The bruises to his face and neck would take a while to fade and wherever he went people would stop and stare and point.

Malfoy hurried through the corridors between lessons so that people would have but the smallest chance to glimpse him before, inevitably he bumped into Harry Potter who did not shun him as the others did, instead he glared at the bunch of first years who were staring at Malfoy and whispering rapidly between themselves. "I know what it's like," Harry merely muttered when Malfoy looked up wondering why Harry Potter should be the only one in the school who should stand up for him, and inevitably he felt a pang of guilt that Malfoy had only encouraged and sometimes started the rumours for which Harry had been persecuted in his time at Hogwarts.

"Yeah right," Malfoy scorned, "You're Harry Potter the Boy who Lived, or The Chosen One, I'm Draco the Fag," he spat bitterly before storming out of the castle doors to resume his life of solitude.

TBC