Part IV: The Harder I Swim The Faster I Sink
Draco POV, takes place about a year before The Last Drop. The events of part IV are chronological.
New Tags: drowning metaphors | minor character death | emotional hurt/comfort | smut
They took him to Inverness. He didn't even have to ask. But Granger wasn't there. It was daylight. Somehow it felt like it should have happened in the middle of the night. He'd never thought his mother would die during the day.
Everything happened so fast — minutes, really. One of them he was in the library, passing books to Charlie Weasley. The next he was ushering his mother away, into his father's study. And then — and then—
Traitor!
The sun was bright. A cloudless sky, mocking him. Chairs scraped against the floor and people hustled him along, up a flight of stairs. To the hospital ward. But Granger wasn't there. She worked the night shift. During the day they rotated other healers as needed. It was someone he didn't know. An older wizard with thin, mousy hair and greying stubble left for days unattended.
"Did you hear me?"
Draco turned, facing the man. He shook his head.
"Your injuries are minor. Can you apply this yourself?"
A small jar of dittany pressed into his hands. The dried blood on his palms a dark red nearly brown from oxidizing. The letters on the jar's label were rushed. He knew at a glance who had scratched them down.
The curtain around his cot settled back down and he was alone again. With a jar of dittany for the scrapes and cuts and nothing for his mind. Nothing to stop the screaming. The rush of water.
Despite the silencing charms inside each medical bay he was aware of the flurry of movement around him. For hours he watched shadows behind the white sheets hung for privacy. He stared. While the memories repeated. Some from earlier that day and some from years before.
When he was sixteen and sleepless. Cursed with an impossible task. One that he knew would result in his own death, for his failure. But at least it would keep his mother safe. There were days in his sixth year at Hogwarts where he felt like he was drowning. Occluding so hard and so often that his ears popped from the pressure. Jaw aching from clenching it and permanent marks on his palms from his fingernails. Until he'd bit them down to the quick, leaving them ragged.
After a few months of no progress on his task he'd started going to the lake to swim. The cold waters a reminder that he was, in fact, alive. He could make choices for himself. First he would strip to his swimming trunks, glancing around to make sure no one else was there. Why would there have been, in late autumn when the wind was cold and the air off of the water turned it icy. Then he would wade out until the water hit his chest before pushing further, to where his pale feet glowed in the dark depths. First he would gather a breath, as much as he could, then he would sink — all the way to the bottom. Letting himself reach the silty floor. Perhaps a grindylow would wrap itself around his legs. Or one of the merpeople would pull him deeper still. Stealing his oxygen. They could have it.
When he was sufficiently dissatisfied that he wasn't going to be taken captive by a resident of the lake he would dig his feet into the muck and push himself upwards, propelling to the surface while the water rushed alongside him. And for those few minutes he wasn't a Death Eater. He wasn't Lucius's son. He was just a boy underwater. Drowning without really drowning.
One day he noticed someone leaning against a tree, nose in a book. Mass of curly hair around her head. She didn't seem to notice him. So he kept up with his dives. Letting himself grow numb to the cold from the water and the air. The pressure. Until he could swim in the middle of winter with barely a shiver.
It was dark now. He knew because the shadows behind the curtains had changed. They were harder to discern. So he yanked the curtain back, looking desperately around the hospital wing. It was night, now, wasn't it? The night shift. He'd made it that far. Looking with straining eyes.
He could feel his lungs fill. Could feel the grip of his mother's hand on his arm. The manicured nails digging in.
Draco, what did you do?
There were no empty beds. Each held the injured. The dying. The dead.
One of them was a Weasley. A twin. Older than him. Fred? One was Alicia Spinnet. Brilliant at quidditch. Both of them weren't breathing. How could they be, when a killing curse hit each of them.
He watched Alecto Carrow fall first. Suffocated by ropes from Dedalus Diggle's wand, before his aunt removed him from the battle.
There wasn't time to think. He had to complete his mission. To act as though the Order had infiltrated the Manor, though he had brought them in. Through the house elves's tunnels. Breaking the ancient wards himself after months of work. Of research in the library, through every journal of every Malfoy heir. Until he knew the ancestral magic fully. Just like he did with the vanishing cabinet.
While the Order tussled with the few Death Eaters who lived in the guest wing at the Manor he snuck out, running to the library to get Charlie Weasley what he needed. His mother close behind him.
Drowning. He was drowning again. Lungs filling with lake water. Coughing, always coughing and never clearing it. Trying to occlude it away. To clear his mind. To protect it. But how could he protect his mind when he couldn't—
There were glimpses of Granger while she checked each bed. Short hair pinned back and face ashen with each reveal. And then it was his mother lit up in green light. His aunt's merciless laughter. The way his father had almost stumbled.
The smell of healing potions and the sharp tang of blood. He was in a hospital ward. When had he been here last? He'd been tired and he missed her. It wasn't fair to miss her but he did. So often. And even though he needed sleep he went anyway. Pressing her to the wall and holding her against him, feeling reckless and so sure that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. And then reality separated them, like it always would. She went back to her patients and he went home.
And now he would never go home again.
That was obvious. And not just from the chaos that ensued when his aunt watched him give members of the Order rare books from the Malfoy library. Books that could help them. Books that the Dark Lord would have wanted destroyed.
Traitor!
Draco couldn't handle the smell. The sounds. With the curtain open he could hear every agonizing scream. Every wail of pain. Every sputtering breath. Three had met the killing curse —Weasley and Diggle and Spinnet. And three were so injured Draco doubted they would survive. Chang would never fly again, at the very least. Corner—what was his first name? Did he have a family or friends? Draco couldn't even picture his face. Couldn't remember if they were in the same year.
On the other side he knew that Carrow was gone. Selwyn and Travers too. Some of the best duelists. And his mother—
He moved quickly, striding from the hospital ward, his stomach sinking at the sight of his cousin beneath a white sheet. They'd met formally only once. At Grimmauld Place, in the weeks before the retrieval at the Manor. She was smart and funny and everything he would have looked up to as a child. A child. She had a child. A little boy. Who would never know his mother. Never see her change her hair from magenta to black and back again. A boy without a mother—
Gasping for breath he trailed his hand along the walls of the staircase until he reached the bottom. The pub, blissfully empty. He reached for a glass and poured a drink, not caring what it was. Staring at it. The clear liquid ready for him to dive in. To seep into his bones. If he had enough of it, it would take it away. But what would be enough to rid him of it all?
Her name was Nymphadora but she hated it. Tonks, she'd said. I may have married a Lupin but I'll always be Tonks. She winked at people and made jokes. So skilled with glamours she turned Draco into an unrecognizable person before a quick mission just three days ago. The magic so powerful he'd had to lie about it to his mother when he came home with darker hair. His mother—
The glass shattered in his hand. Shards cutting into his palm. Red. There was so much red. It was warm. He knew the basic healing spells so he vanished the glass. Vanished the blood. Stitches. He needed stitches. One two three four. He counted them off while he mended them with his wand.
Draco, what did you do?
He wrapped an arm around his mother and whispered in her ear. Everything would be alright. He was protecting them. She said she knew. That she could help. And then he heard the sound of boots on marble. The swish of robes. The cruelest of laughs.
Oh, Cissy. You always were the weak one.
There was nothing to do but wait. He walked the length of the room. Counted the chairs and the stools and the tables. Counted the bottles on the shelf. How many of them were empty. He started a fire and watched the flames licking the brick of the chimney.
Flames from a hooked wand, chasing his heels. Burning. The crash of books and shelves behind him, a rushed deterrent that wouldn't work. Not long enough. The heavy door to his father's study flung open and he pushed his mother inside. Locking the door behind them. But it didn't matter if it was locked. Wouldn't matter if he'd thrown up intricate wards laced with runic magic. It was keyed to their blood. Malfoy and Black.
Traitor!
"You're still here," Granger said, startling him. She'd changed. Or at least he thought she did. Her jumper was blue. It was a nice blue. When he saw her earlier he thought she wore burgundy. It was blood, his mind hissed and he ignored it.
"I don't have anywhere else to go. Not anymore," he added. The fire was low and hummed between his ears. All he had was the clothes on his back. The wand in his pocket. The gold ring on his smallest finger.
"Elliot told me you only had minor injuries."
Draco let out a cold laugh. "Minor. What does that even mean? The visible ones?"
The tingle of a diagnostic spell settled over him and he turned away, back towards the bar. To the colored array of bottles reaching towards the ceiling.
"Let me see your hand," she said, touching the edge of his palm before he could refuse.
"I took care of it."
"Not very well," she replied, and added a few drops of dittany and a little of her scaring potion as well. "That should make it better."
He glanced at it briefly. The skin free of marks in seconds. Then he went back to the bottles, looking for something palatable.
"My mother's dead."
It was the first time he'd said it aloud. And still it felt as fresh as the moment he watched the light bathe her in sickly green.
"I heard—I'm so sorry, Draco."
"And you're the only one." He snatched a dark glass bottle he hoped held whiskey.
"Don't say that—"
"Granger, have a drink with me." Pouring a double then a triple then filling the whole glass so that he didn't have to refill it. A muggle whiskey.
"I can't—"
"You can and you will." He gulped it down until there was nothing left. Tasting nothing.
"Draco, I've told you I don't like to when I'm working. If anyone should need me—"
"I need you. Please," he said, looking at her fully. Hating the dullness in her eyes and the tilt of her jaw. Hating that a tear fell from his eyes so he wiped it away. "I don't want to drink alone. Not tonight. Just…Please."
"Alright." She summoned a bottle of gin and a small glass, which she polished with her jumper first. When she had a small measure of liquor in it she raised it as if to make a toast. But she immediately looked hard at the table and closed her mouth. More than one tear slipping over her cheeks.
After a few minutes of him taking thick pulls from the bottle and her dainty drinks from her glass, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.
Traitor!
"I can't do this, I can't sit in silence. All I can see—all I can hear—"
"What do you want to talk about?" Granger asked.
He didn't know. There was broken glass on the floor. Embers glowing in the fireplace. A thick book on the edge of the bar. "Tell me a story. Anything would be better than the one in my mind."
"I don't—what kind of story?"
"One you like. Something muggle if you have to—just something with fucking hope."
As she spoke she took sips of her drink and he watched her. The beginning of her tale slowly taking shape. Let her voice join the rushing water between his ears. Until it was louder. Until it was the only thing. Until she smiled softly at him, just for one perfect fragmented second, before the waves swallowed him whole.