Chapter 28 Afraid

Draco sat high up, way higher than any of his worries and woes, in the secret place Blaise and Pansy had shown him. In the endless isolation in his secret hideout, Pansy and Blaise had since moved on to a place with more space, he pondered his life amongst many empty bottles of mead and dandelion root beer. He'd never, of course, admit to anyone they were actually among his favorites. That wasn't appropriate for someone like him. He was a Malfoy. A Death Eater. A murder. A pathetic worthless loser, he mused to himself. He didn't care at all about the world below him. He didn't care that he was supposed to be in class right now. He didn't care that he'd been hexed three times this morning alone. He didn't care that some 3rd year twerp has let it slip what he just so happened to have witnessed that fateful night on the Hogwarts green. He also didn't care that others had come forward to say they'd noticed a very peculiar relationship developing between himself and the wayward professor. He didn't care that it too the entire school less than two days to figure out that he'd been fucking their evil vampire professor and enjoyed it. He didn't care that this also meant they all knew he was gay now too, something that would no doubt quickly get back to his mother who'd also be devastated.

...No, he didn't care. Not at all. Not one bit.

Nothing mattered to him anymore. No one would ever want him. Even his scumbag lover didn't want him. He was nothing. So nothing mattered.

Even worse, he'd dragged Harry into it somehow. He wasn't entirely sure how or why Harry had shown up, but he was positive it was something he'd done. He knew to be suspicious of me. Righteously. I would have just left with him. Betraying everyone. Not that they want me anyways, but they stuff he stole, that was important. No one would want me. Not even a muggle would want me now, scarred as I am. I am a monster. A cruel, empty monster.

Finally the need to void his bladder became to much for Draco to put off anymore. Reluctantly he rose, wobbling slightly from the alcohol he'd imbibed. Cursing the sheer number of stairs that he had to climb back down and silently praying no one would be around to noticed he'd skipped class he slowly made his way down to the washroom.

After taking care of his urgent need Draco stopped at the sink and did something he'd been avoiding lately. He looked at himself in the mirror. Four ugly, red streaks marred the pristine porcelain flesh that spread from the top of his cheek down all the way to the soft pink skin of his lips. He shuddered at the sight. Hideous. Apprehensively, he raised his hand to meet the angry scars the ran the length of his face. He winced slightly as his fingers brushed across the too smooth skin the jutted out roughly from the baby soft skin of his face. Tears prickled the corners of his eyes, threatening at any moment to become to heavy and spill over; which they did, rolling effortlessly over his mutilated cheek. Somewhere inside him stirred a spark of anger at the sight of himself, weak, scarred, crying.

Before his brain could catch up his fist had slammed hard into the mocking image in front of him. A small yelp of pain escaped his lips as he quickly withdrew his now bleeding fist. Gently his rinsed the blood away in the sink, being careful not to let any glass into the open wound. He sighed, watching his blood swirl down the drain. He'd missed this. Somehow it was a cathartic feeling, watching as his very life force slowly spiraled down the drain along with the rest of everything in his life. Absently he toyed with a larger chunk of glass the had come loose in his outburst.

Everything in his life had always been about perfection. Since he could remember his father had tolerated nothing but perfection, instilling this ideology into Draco through various forms of punishment when he deviated from what his father expected from him. When he was younger, his father simply beat him when he wasn't completely satisfied with the boy, but as he grew older his methods turned progressively crueler. Draco almost considered himself lucky when he got off with a Cruciatus, for it seemed his father was particularly honed into the things that really crippled Draco emotionally. The pain was something he could live through, however intense. He'd grown accustomed to it over the years, between his fathers punishments and his fathers "training" he learned that no matter how intense the pain was, he would survive. No, but that was not truly Draco's crux, much to his fathers dismay, it was the boys weakness to emotion. Draco tried desperately to hide his real emotions, to cultivate his mask. And it worked, for most. But his father was not so easily fooled, serving many years under Voldemort had sharpened his skill at reading people into a fine art. It was always the eyes, Lucius found, that gave a person away. There was no stare, no mask, nothing that could hide the fear, the shame, the misery. It was like an exquisite wine to the senior Malfoy, he relished in picking it out of his victims and watched with perverse excitement as the terror turned to madness and eventually faded into nothing. He would of course let people believe that Bellatrix had the real flair for torture, but the bitch was half mad herself, and he would never have conducted himself in such an uncouth manner.

These inclinations, mixed with bitter disappointment at his sons inability to match his depraved intensity, led Lucius to come up with more and more sadistic ways to abuse his progeny. He saw long, long before Draco realized it how the boy looked at Potter, how he preened like a girl whenever the Savior was around. He took special delight at forcing Draco to constantly antagonize and bully the boy and his worthless friends. He watched those grey eyes, eager to see him transition into something darker, more akin to himself. That transformation, however, never came. Over time Draco pushed further and further away from his father's influence, despite the man's efforts to pull him back into the Dark Lord's fold.

Draco, meanwhile, still remained haunted by the ingrained need to be perfect. And since the war, hell, since his 6th year it had become abundantly clear to him that he was anything but. No, he couldn't even come close to the bright light that shined so easily from Gryffindor, the light that had become everything to him. Tears rose up in his eyes again as he slowly dragged the sharp glass along the veins of his arms, not yet pressing hard enough to break the skin. He thought of how he come to really see the Golden Boy after the Dark Lord returned. How he couldn't stand that he'd be forced to join something he wanted no part of, and worse yet hated the way Harry looked at him because of it. How everyone looked at him. He was evil, and he knew it. They all knew it.

A soft gasp from his own lips turned his attention back to his wrists where the glass had bit into his skin slightly as he glided it passed the blood supply underneath. Tiny beads of blood welled up, and he wiped them dumbly with his thumb watching the sanguine fluid smear across the alabaster surface. He breathed a stuttered breath as he re positioned the glass and this time pushed with force as he moved it across the tiny red highways in his arm. Instantly, blood rushed forwarded, beading up, quickly over inflating and spilling steadily down, staining his shirt. He stood transfixed at the sight, this was his release. He had missed it so, during the days when the professor banned him from doing so. He would yearn for it, only finding comfort when the professor would finally take him, and feeling so empty for the endless expanses of time that roamed between. Now he was back, back to where he belonged. He wasn't dead yet, but he could honestly say, it wasn't for lack of trying.

Groaning deeper he tended to the wound on his hand and wrist, careful to stop the bleeding but not actually healing either. The he turned his attention to the mirror, undoing the damage with a quick Reparo. He gave once last glance around his temporary sanctuary opened the door to step back into the misery that awaited him when he collided with something very firm, and very male.