A/N: Chapter warnings for; graphic depictions of torture, explicit language, blood and violence, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), minor character death
** We will be moving the chapter warnings to the endnotes starting soon in order to avoid major spoilers. That does not mean you shouldn't be cautious and refrain from checking them if you think the content might be triggering. Stay safe**
Chapter Nineteen: Wretched Things
"We men are wretched things."
-Homer, The Iliad
...
Lucius Malfoy's eyes have blue flecks up close. Not just a dull gray, but actual vibrant tendrils of icy blue, now glazed and utterly emotionless.
Evan knows so because he has nothing else to stare into as his body shudders with the aftereffects of waves of intense torture. Time after time after time. His lord had not been pleased. Oh not pleased at all. His missing fingernails can attest to that.
Here he lies, in the same Dance Hall that also harbors the body of its owner, sprawled only a few feet from Evan, sluggish blood oozing from his mangled hair, matting it down and fading into the dark marble. Evan cannot stop looking in the traitor's eyes, so chilled and graceful even in death.
He hadn't lasted long under the Dark Lord's wand. Not even a full ten minutes. Evan somewhat envies him for it. For how easily he got away. His bleeding fingers are laced with agony at the slightest bit of twitch, even as the air brushes against the tender flesh where his nails were supposed to be.
They'll grow back. Painfully. Eventually. But they will, unlike his pride.
His lord is displeased. Evan cannot blame him, he is displeased with himself, with the Malfoy family's ongoing betrayals. With the failure in his mission.
He wasn't supposed to snatch Potter and the Malfoy brat, he wasn't even supposed to meet up with the pink bitch to help reign in two bloody teenagers. His mission had nothing to do with them or Umbridge.
Evan had one job. One particular order, that stood behind a bigger obstacle. He needed to get past a room that didn't even exist. The room of requirements. The only problem at the time had been that no matter how many times or how hard he had tried, he couldn't get the damn doors to appear. The doors didn't appear, and Evan's mission ended in failure.
Except that it didn't. Snatching Potter would have been the perfect atonement for his failure. His Lord had been trying to get the boy since that summer, he had stopped after the Dementor attack, and ordered Evan to kill the boy's relatives.
Squishy, smelly muggles with gory entrails and no ferocity whatsoever in the face of a blast. Dead. Easy. Finished.
Just like the corpse of the man next to him, mocking him with his gaping mouth and glassy eyes. Evan cannot hear what the body might be chanting, his ears are whistling so loudly in his head that he cannot even hear what his master is drawling over his head.
He is in so much pain, that he is more than sure that his body isn't registering the majority out of sheer overwhelmed senses. He might die of shock right on the spot, except… his lord wouldn't allow that. Not just yet. If he wanted Evan dead, he would already be in the same predicament as Lucius Malfoy, or served as a meal to that hateful pet Snake.
It takes him a while to realize that the reason why his hearing is impaired, is because they have been clogged by his blood. His Lord stands over him, unimpressed by Evan's hoarse screaming and useless thrashing, as if he was expecting better, then flicks his wand and Evan's ears clear with a painful pop.
He lets out an anguished wail. That hurt.
"You have displeased me, Evan," his lord says, clicking his tongue, his bare foot comes upon Evan's blood caked cheek and tilts his head to the ceiling, away from the dead mocking eyes of Lucius Malfoy.
"I'm extremely disappointed in you," Evan's body twitches, violently shaking as The Dark Lord's cold foot presses down on his cheekbone without an ounce of mercy. The force is enough to make Evan cry out again in earnest. Voldemort doesn't give away until the bone shatters under his foot, caving into his face and drawing another mangled whimper out of his mouth.
Evan does not have a single bit of coherency left in him. It hurts. It hurts too much to think, to be, to stay alive.
"I had high hopes for you," the foot is moving down to his windpipe and Evan chokes on his own blood, his feet writhing and his arms uselessly flapping. He can barely make sense of the words that are coming out of his Lord's mouth.
"You disobeyed me," comes the gentle hiss and the subtle press of the man's firm toes on his neck, just in the hollow of his Adam's apple. The agony is beyond measurable. Evan craves death the way a thirsty man wills to do the most heinous of acts for a drop of water.
"You failed in your mission," the foot lets up only for a moment before pressing down again with clear intent, Evan's face is purple and his hands, in spite of their burning agony are now clutching at his neck, intensifying the pain beyond a coherent measure. Too much is the answer.
"You abducted Harry Potter and the son of a fellow Death Eater, one with a much higher ranking than yours, unauthorized," one more push and the fragile bone would give in, Evan knows this, with the same clarity he knows that the sky is blue, but he cannot stop it, he cannot beg. He cannot breathe.
"You tortured them, unauthorized."
Evan wails and wails and wails.
"You let them escape, you failed to recapture them. You failed to stop Severus's traitorous hands from taking the boys."
The foot is suddenly lifted and Evan shudders, gasping and panting and sputtering for air. His throat is clogged with the same blood that pools in his mouth, partially closing his airway, but he doesn't care, he heaves and coughs, rolls on the floor and cries like a small child.
He had never known such pain.
"And yet," his lord drawls, his voice almost soft, he caresses Nagini's head as the snake tangles herself around him, her tongue flickering at the coppery scent of blood. "And yet I let you live."
It wasn't just Evan. There had been others. Bella was the worst. She had absolutely mauled the Potter boy, oh Evan knew, the brat would never be the same again, Evan knows this, but he cannot say so, he cannot breath and he doesn't dare utter a word.
Bella got off easy. She got off easy.
"Too many failures, too many shortcomings, Evan, I'm disappointed," Evan feels the tip of the Snake's tail brushing against his hip and he screeches in terror, blubbering, sobbing as Nagini drops her weight down on his legs, locking him down.
"And the cost," another click of the tongue. "Lucius Malfoy is dead, Evan. You forced him into acting out. I had him in the palm of my hand, and you burned it to ashes," the scales roughly rub against his bare skin and Evan is so mortified by its presence that he screams merely as an outlet for the over piling terror.
"My potion master, my precious double agent is also gone, so is a valuable flood of information that I was gathering of Albus Dumbledore and the boys you kidnapped," Evan cannot understand a thing he's hearing anymore.
"And can you fathom what's worse, Evan?" comes the gentle coo in sync with Nagini's flickering tongue near Evan's neck, right where Voldemort's foot rested only a minute ago. Evan weeps.
"You touched what was mine," he says. "You put your grimy fingers upon the boy whose blood is the reason I'm standing here right now. You tortured the boy without an ounce of preservation after my explicit orders not to."
Evan cannot tolerate this for a moment longer. He truly cannot. He wants death, he chooses death, he needs this to be over.
"Now he's tainted," Nagini's head bumps his chin. "He's stained by your magic, his mind could be corrupted beyond use, and that is all your fault."
He didn't set a finger on that brat. He didn't! He only tortured Potter three times, three times! All the while the boy danced under his spell, writhing and sobbing as pathetically as Evan is doing right now. It was Bella! She damaged him!
His lord sneers down at him. "You are a fool, Evan," Nagini finally moves down with a hiss aimed at her master, down Evan's bleeding chest and nestles on his hips. "Just like a mindless child, I cannot leave you to your own devices."
Evan doesn't care, he wants to die, he wants his voice back so he can pray to a god he doesn't believe in to save him, he wants his parents.
"You should be thankful, that I'm sparing your life," his lord says before hissing another order at Nagini and miraculously enough, the giant reptile actually starts crawling away from him. "I'm granting you your life, for you to cherish and remember how merciful your Lord can be, even to worthless slugs like you."
Evan nods his head fervently, he cannot speak. He doesn't think he ever wants to speak again.
"Do not test me anymore, Evan," Evan's head lolls back to stare into Malfoy's eyes, grey and blue ornate with streams of murkish blood.
"One small misstep is all I need before Nagini feasts on your flesh."
Evan hums with pain and in vehement agreement. Anything, he'll do anything for this to be over already. His lord spares him one last glare and then flicks his head to a masked Death Eater.
"Get him out of my sight."
Harry wakes up with rancid bile already in his mouth. Frantically pushing the covers away, he falls to the floor, and nearly crawls towards the bathroom. Disoriented, and still unfamiliar with the new place, he almost doesn't reach there in time and expels his guts in the hallway. He scrambles into the bathroom and retches in the dark, holding onto the toilet for dear life.
That was awful. So awful indeed that Harry wants to pour bleach into his eyes or down his ears just to get the images and the sounds out of his head.
He retches again.
Lucius Malfoy died in an instant, much quicker than Mrs. Malfoy's messy, heartbreaking death. Harry had killed the man himself, with a careless flick of his wand that first paralyzed the man, and then tore through his head, spattering blood and brain matter on the floor. Dead. All those lives, in the palm of his hands.
Bella was easy too, Harry had been almost too gentle with her, two flicks of his wand, she hadn't even screamed properly before he let her up, let her grovel at his feet and pepper it with desperate, grateful pecks. He had sneered down at her with a certain gleam in his eyes before watching her retreat back to the flock of death eaters who bore witness.
His stomach is churning violently, even though he's already emptied it. His innards are trying to turn themselves inside out. His stomach wants to come out of his body and walk away as if it could quit its job.
Evan Rosier, Harry doesn't even want to think about it, even though the vignette is purged to the back of his eyelids, the scene is sickening, the things that Harry did to that man, he clutches the toilet and dry heaves into the bowl, his eyes clenched shut at the graphic images. The rancid smell of vomit reaches his nose and he gags.
He still remembers the way the man's bones felt under his foot, the way they shattered and gave away, blooming a spurt of blood and an animalistic cry of anguish. Harry has never been disgusted with himself more. Not even in Dumbledore's office, in the instant that he learned of his relatives' demise and was immediately flooded by relief. He can almost still smell all the blood.
With one last gasping heave he sits back on his heels and looks around the darkened bathroom, his chest slightly heaving as he pants for breath and listens to the silent sounds of the cottage. He feels satisfied, unimaginably, and heinously satisfied with what he had done to Lucius and Rosier.
They deserved it. Harry digs the heels of his hands into his eyes; they didn't. No one does.
"When may I have this one, master?" the snake had asked him as he'd stroked her head. He rubs his hands vigorously at his pants, to make himself forget the feel of her scales. In the vision, he'd merely tilted his head to the side, regarding the mangled remains of the whimpering man.
"His flesh is too bitter now," he'd hissed to the snake. "He is frightened. I want him to be sweet and supple for you, Nagini."
"The white man?"
His eyes had flicked towards Lucius and then he'd hummed. "Perhaps later."
And the snake obliged, beautifully terrorizing the man beneath his feet, reducing him to a senseless blob sputtering in horror. Harry's hands had been perfectly steady in the dream.
He feels it in his blood, the happiness, the morbid amusement at the pathetic vermins surrounding him, at the ones lying on the floor, one dead and one wishing he were.
Harry flushes the toilet and stands with a groan, trying to shake off the pins and needles that stab his legs as he stumbles to the sink to wash his face.
He cannot stomach the thought of putting his eyes together for more than a second, much less sleep anymore. The screams are stuck in his head, worse than Cedric's death, and so much worse than Mrs. Malfoy's death. Those times he'd merely been the spectator. This time, he'd been the one doing it.
He had done that to Lucius and Rosier.
Draco's dad is dead.
Harry knows that he knew he would die, but the harsh confirmation is such a shock.
Draco has no one now.
He gurgles a fistful of water a few times, and mourns the lack of his toothbrush before trudging out of the bathroom into the corridor, and just stands there, aimlessly staring at his feet as subtle tremors run through his body. He grips his forearms in an almost bruising grip, trying to steady his hands just a little. He also knows it's futile.
He really wishes Ron and Hermione were here now.
'Go to sleep, kiddo,' comes Sirius's voice and Harry sighs, randomly heading down the corridor instead of his own room. Draco's door is ajar, and it softly creaks as Harry pads in, blindly heading to the bed Draco is resting upon. The other boy is on his back, hands locked and perfectly resting on his stomach upon his blanket.
Harry hesitates only for a moment before trudging over to the bedside.
The bed dips under Harry's weight and Draco stirs, before without opening an eye, he reaches beneath his head to wrestle out a pillow from the small heap. Harry silently watches the momentous struggle as Draco pulls the pillow out and chucks it at him, which he catches instinctively, before rolling onto his good shoulder, facing Harry. Then he absently pats the bedside, before his breath evens out again.
With a small sigh, Harry drops the pillow next to Draco's and folds himself on the bed, burying his face in his aching forearms with a small gap remaining open in between where he peeks at Draco, lying perfectly still and poised, arrogantly graceful, even in sleep.
Surprisingly, Harry's body doesn't push on the urge to vomit as he stares at Draco and thinks of his father's swift demise. Harry lets his eyes flutter close with Draco in his sight, a comforting presence in spite of their unfortunate predicament.
He doses off peacefully for the rest of the night.
Harry is giving cooking another chance, and so far, it is going smoothly. Well, as smoothly as possible under the circumstances.
Draco feels pretty useless, but he doesn't know the first thing about cooking, he never needed to. Malfoy Manor had their fair share of house elves to do that for him, he doesn't have the slightest concept of what to do with raw ingredients.
It's very lucky that at least one of them knows how to cook, and the familiarity with which Harry moves around the kitchen, makes it quite clear that he's in his element.
So Draco just sighs and watches Harry beat the eggs, a pan heating on the stove, Draco's fingers are interlaced under his chin as he rests his elbows on the table. Very inelegant etiquette, but he doesn't think Harry would really care.
His eyes move around the room, trying to get used to the new environment. It's quite pleasant, if one thinks about it. And now that he's had a pain reliever potion, his shoulder is no longer in excruciating pain. The scratches feel pretty ignorable. He can actually focus.
Last night's storm is long gone and has given way to a cheery sun, clouds rolling about the too blue sky. It's almost insultingly merry.
His eyes land on a stool with an empty vase resting beside the couch. For a second, he just stares.
There are two wands over there. Two. He'd thought he'd left his wand in Umbridge's office, and he didn't have a clue about Harry's. Are those spare wands? They won't work very well, but at least they won't be defenceless. He gets up and walks over to the table with a slight sense of dread; better give them a try.
As soon as he sees the wands, though, he freezes, gaping ever so slightly. One of them is definitely Harry's wand, he's seen it enough times. And the other. Is clearly not his.
"Harry?" he calls out, mouth dry.
"Yeah?" Harry doesn't look up from the stove.
"Where did you get these from?"
Harry throws a confused glance at his direction, before his eyes clear with realisation, he turns back to the eggs, "Oh yeah, Snape gave them to me the other day."
The other wand is even more familiar than Harry's. With a hand trembling almost as violently as Harry's, his fingers close around the ornate handle. It fits perfectly in his hands. Just like it used to in his mother's.
Father gave him Mother's wand. With a lump in his throat, he gives it a small swish. A cool wind breezes through the room and he shivers.
"Uh, Draco?"
"It's fine," Draco mutters, still staring at the wand. His father had kept it. He'd thought that the Dark Lord, or perhaps Bellatrix, would have snapped it. But no, father had kept this, and he'd given it to him. Tears prick his eyes, both his father and mother were dead. And all that he had of them right now was this wand. Not really a relic but also a stark reminder of what had happened.
He clutches the wand tighter, afraid that it'd disappear if he doesn't. His mother had had this wand for as long as he could remember. It's like having a part of her with him. He runs a finger over the smooth ebony wand, and his fingers almost seem to tingle.
He points it at the empty vase, and conjures up some flowers. Daffodils. And with another spell, fills it up with water. The lump in his throat still hasn't receded, nor the prickling in his eyes.
When he feels a hand on his shoulder, he startles. Badly. Bad enough that he jumps away with a snarl, and then his side bumps into the corner of the stool, making him gasp in pain. He looks up, Harry is backing away from him, hands up as if in surrender, or as if to placate him. Panic is creeping into his eyes as he keeps backtracking.
It takes Draco a moment through his haze of panic and confusion to realise he's pointing his wand at Harry; and horrified, he almost drops the wand from his slack hands, and lowers it with lightning speed.
Fuck.
Harry's eyes are fixated on the wand, hypnotized and mortified by what he's seeing. Draco calls him, but he doesn't respond, he's looking at the wand in Draco's hand and his breathing is tilted, blinking hard.
"Harry," he calls out again, this time a little quieter.
The breathing speeds up, dramatically advancing as Draco attempts to step closer, the blonde quickly reels back and drops the wand, almost completely on instinct. Harry's eyes dart down with the wand and there they remain, as he slowly sinks down with it.
"Harry…" Draco's voice is strangled, he takes a step towards him, Harry's head snaps up to him, and then to his hands. Upon finding them empty, the panic starts receding, but he doesn't get up.
He has no idea what's happening.
Draco wants to keep a hand on his shoulder, to comfort Harry, but he can't bring himself to. So he just stands a couple steps away, looking at him helplessly. "Harry, I'm so sorry. I was just startled. You're safe here, I wasn't going to do anything."
Harry just shakes his head, his knuckles are white as he grips at himself. Still shaking. Draco stares down at his mother's wand and then glances back at Potter's on the stool. Slowly, he reaches back to retrieve the unfamiliar wand.
"I'm sorry," Draco repeats, kneeling down next to him, "Just take deep breaths," he brings the boy's wand in his sight, momentarily tearing Harry's eyes away from the wand on the floor.
"Harry. You're not breathing right," in a mad desperate dash his mind wonders whether there is a calming draught in Snape's stock, but he perishes the thought the moment it comes. He cannot just leave Harry like this, in spite of having no idea what was happening to him.
"I have your wand here, Harry, but you need to breathe."
And Harry is trying, and failing, as if he's choking on air. Draco never thought he would see such a sight, so unfamiliar and out of place.
"Just breathe like I am!" He dramatically inhales, and huffs out. He does it again and again, and Harry's eyes, instead of the wand, are now trained on him. That should be as good a sign as any.
Draco keeps breathing and Harry shakily follows, Draco's own breathing eases a little, "You need to actually hold it in your chest for a second," Harry huffs in response. "Don't just huff and puff, Potter," Draco snaps and Harry glares at him, but obliges.
Draco moves as close as he can, within an arm's distance of Harry. Harry has loosened his grip, and his trembling hands now rest upon bent knees. He is breathing on his own now, slowly and deeply, eyes shut, even the trembling is subtler.
Draco lets him have his space, discreetly, toeing his mother's wand out of sight as Harry's is still clenched in his hand.
"I'm sorry," Harry mutters once he opens his eyes, previously pale cheeks now tinged pink.
"It's noth-" Draco's eyes widen and his nose twitches, and he abruptly stands up, making Harry flinch. He winces, but there are more pressing matters-
"Harry! The food is burning!"
Harry scrambles to his feet, letting out a string of curses as they both rush towards the now smoking stove. Swiftly he snatches a kitchen rag and turns off the stove before rushing the smoking pan to the kitchen sink and turns on the tap. The pan sizzles and the smell of burnt eggs is awful, spreading around the kitchen as Draco rushes around and opens the windows and the back door.
"I swear I'm not this bad at cooking," Harry finally says with a nervous chuckle, dumping the ruined pan under the water.
"It's fine."
Harry shakes his head. "It's not, I'm sorry. I've been acting so weird, and all this food is going to waste, our supplies aren't going to last us for long if this keeps happening and I-."
"You're doing it again," Draco interrupts him.
"Doing what?"
"You're rambling. It doesn't matter. It's just food, I'm sure Snape can bring us more, besides, you seem to know more about cooking than I do," Draco shrugs. He hopes they won't be stuck here long enough for their food to actually run out.
"You haven't eaten a single thing I've made," Harry points out.
"Well to be fair, we're not exactly in top-notch condition. I'll give you a pass for cooking for now."
"You're a git."
"A hungry one," Draco smirks at him, a weak one, but a smirk nonetheless. "How do you feel about fruit and milk for breakfast? No stove, no burning," Draco used to have that sometimes, when he was a kid. Not because food had been burnt or anything, but because he liked the way Twinky sometimes prepared the milk with honey. Their little secret.
"I'm not sure," Harry hums, "the milk might curdle just by looking at me."
"I wouldn't blame the milk," Draco snorts, "when was the last time you actually combed your hair?"
Harry scoffs, "Screw you," But he lifts a hand to pat down the mess. Unsuccessfully.
"Daunting words, Potter."
"Just get the plates, I'll get the milk."
"I thought we agreed to keep you away from the milk?"
"I'm making you drink it if it curdles," Harry shoots back and they exchange a light grin before getting back to the task at hand.
Draco smirks to himself. This is nice. More than he thought it would be.