Pleasure rolled into him, beginning at the end of his wand hand and traveling throughout the rest of his body. Even as he watched through half lidded eyes as the Death Eater dropped to his knees, his whole body convulsing to the pain, Draco could feel his own despair and hate pouring out of his body and into the other man. Every bad thing he could ever claim to have felt was conveyed through the curse, leaving him feeling almost warm.
But there was something tangibly wrong. He tried to ignore it for as long as he could; it just felt so good. But there was a perverse taint to it, one that ran up his spine and fed the excitement. For what seemed like forever—though it couldn't possibly have been more than a few seconds—he drank it in, reveling in the knowledge that there was no one that could possibly stop him.
Shaking, he opened his eyes however, and found the man writhing silently on the ground. He was an unusually ugly man, his stupid mouth was agape and twisting in an unnatural way, yet oddly he made no sound.
Sweat was burning at Draco's forehead and trickling down into the corners of his eyes, but he didn't dare move. His breath came in sharp, shallow lungfulls.
When his surging guilt came momentarily, he wrenched his wand away and severed the link, finding himself gasping even harder than the other man who lay there shuddering. As in other things that he'd never partaked in, he found that a man was wiser immediately after the fact. The guilt nearly made him choke. Before anything else could happen, Draco put the man under a binding curse and spun away, trying to calm his erratic heartbeat and trembling hands.
Slowly he sank to the ground. He was so tired. Everything hurt and it wasn't fair, and now he felt horrible as well. Hopes that Hermione and Potter might come back for him were never exactly strong, thanks to his newfound degree of pessimism, but hope dwindled even further as the minutes stretched by. The ideas he'd had before of Hermione and him going with Potter seemed laughable now. Laughable and disgustingly naïve.
It was that horrible sense of being left behind, of being abandoned, that made him repeat everything that had just happened over and over again in his head, and made him think that he should cry now. His eyes gave no indication that was imminent, but he felt like he should anyway. He'd certainly cried before over lesser things when he'd been alone, and he had never felt more alone than he did now.
Those and other bitter thoughts occupied him for a long time. They were much better than constantly hoping that they would suddenly come back for him. He had no idea how long exactly, but when he caught hints of voices behind him, it felt like hours had passed.
At first he ignored them, hoping and half believing that he was imagining them. But they began to draw closer until he slowly stood and turned around.
"Expelliarmus!" a voice bellowed.
Out of instinct his other hand flashed out to snatch at his flying wand, but he wasn't nearly fast enough.
There was a group of them walking towards him. At first the couple faces he focused on were unfamiliar, but due to the red hair and all too familiar face, he didn't have any trouble placing the one who had disarmed him.
"It's sodding Malfoy!" one of the Weasley twins breathed, which one exactly he had no hope of guessing.
"Lucius' son?" one of them asked.
There were about half a dozen of them. Most of them were gaping at the sight around them, but some of them, with the notable inclusion of Ron Weasley, were glaring at him. He thought about running then, but it was hard enough just to stay standing. And, with some effort, he reminded himself that these technically weren't his enemies. He almost felt guilty in their presence after having tortured the Death Eater. He certainly couldn't bring himself to feel relieved.
"Where's Harry, Malfoy?" The youngest Weasley brother was sporting quite the scowl and hadn't lowered his wand, despite Malfoy being unarmed and motionless. "Where is he?"
Draco looked at the wand pointing accusingly at him, entirely too weary of wands being pointed at him today. "He left."
Ron's neck twisted slightly. "Where did he go?" His enunciation was very careful.
"I don't know," Malfoy might've shrugged if telling the truth hadn't sounded so condemning. "He apparated away with Granger after we attacked."
"Funny," one of the Weasley twins chuckled, apparently the bolder one of the two, as he was the one who stepped out of the group and began to circle around to Malfoy's right. "A right regular comedian we have here."
This movement didn't escape Draco, nor did the general way that the group was fanning out around him almost instinctively. Now that he had the time, he recognized Neville Longbottom towards the back of the group in addition to the three Weasley brothers. He'd never seen the other two before. They looked a bit older than the twins.
"A regular funny man," the other Weasley twin agreed, beginning to circle around to Malfoy's left.
Well, that pretty much confirmed that Potter hadn't been too eager to spread the word that he and Hermione had been traveling together. Since none of them were looking like they were going to step forward and verify his story, even if one of them did happen to know about it, the truth wasn't likely going to fly in this case. Somehow, that suited his sour mood and hungry need for self-pity just fine.
"Just shut up and tell us what happened to Harry," Ron demanded.
"Quite the contradiction, there." Malfoy smirked spitefully at him, though he kept his eyes on the others to show that he wasn't overlooking their advance. "What do you want me to do, shut up or repeat myself? He left with your girlfriend—your former girlfriend, I should say."
Weasley had forever been too easy to provoke. It had always been a dependable pick up for Malfoy's mood back in school. Maybe the Weasel was having a bad week, or maybe the mention of Hermione hit him just right. Regardless, there was no one here to hold him back now.
"Shut your mouth!" Ron roared.
"Isn't he a Death Eater?" one of the two unfamiliar to Draco asked, the one with shorter brown hair. "Why should we believe him?"
"But why wouldn't Harry wait for us?" Neville spoke up uncertainly.
"Why would he?" Malfoy sneered. "He obviously didn't need incompetent help to—"
The twins picked then to lunge for his arms. He'd been expecting it sooner, not that he could do much about it. He was able to wrench his arm out of the left twin's grip and tried to grab for the one on his right, but the effort was largely pointless. In a moment they had both his arms. With a pair of irritatingly similar laughs, they picked him up and forcibly carried him struggling to pin him against the nearest wall. Shameful as it was to admit, he'd always been afraid of them.
"Careful, Fred," one of them laughed, "Looks like Malfoy hasn't had a good day."
"Well, where is it?" the other one asked as Malfoy swore at them and tried to kick with his legs.
"Where's what?" The other unfamiliar boy that hadn't spoken before had run along with the twins laughing. He had his wand pointed at Malfoy and was pulling his longer black hair out of his eyes.
"The fragile warning—they usually mark expensive packages." The first Weasley twin yanked on Draco's arm when he tried to twist out of his grip.
The eyes of the unfamiliar one with the wand lit up as he laughed along with the twins. "They don't even say which end goes up—Levicorpus!"
Draco had the presence of mind not to cry out as his ankles were suddenly jerked out from under him. His hands vainly tried to claw at the ground, but he ended up suspended in the air anyway, dangling by his ankles and twisting above the ground. Everything was out of arms reach, so he settled for gritting his teeth. His face had flushed, and not just from the blood painfully rushing down into his head.
The twins and the wanker holding him with the spell were having a fine hearty laugh. As he was twisted around, partially due to his struggling, he found that Ron and the other unfamiliar one were watching with cold expressions while Neville looked particularly uncomfortable.
More jokes came and went, but Draco shut his eyes and resisted the urge to vomit. Hanging upside down was not on the list of things his body was up to. But a perceptive change in their voices made him open his eyes just in time to see the ground rush up to greet him as the spell was released.
Directions became mostly meaningless as he lay there for a moment, the world painfully spinning around his head. He'd landed, fairly luckily, on his shoulder, though that had previously been one of the few places he could claim didn't hurt outright.
But once again hands were grabbing him by the arms and pinning him up against the wall again. They seemed to be taking it slightly easier on him than before, perhaps noticing that he wasn't up for this kind of routine. But if they'd had even the smallest bit of pity, they might've allowed him a moment to wipe at the tears rolling down his cheeks, more from the pain than the humiliation, he'd like to think.
The older black haired boy had backed off and Ron had stepped forward, stormy expression still in place. Draco had seen enough beatings, even participated in a few, to be able to spot one in the making.
"I'm only going to ask you one more time, Malfoy," Ron couldn't have made his impending intentions anymore obvious if he'd rolled up his sleeves, "Where's Harry?"
It was pointless. He knew that laughing would only make Weasley madder, so he did it anyway, despite how much it hurt. Weasley didn't really want his question answered by him anyway.
"Getting lonely for Potter already?" Malfoy sneered the best he could. "I guess you would since you've gotten rid of Hermione. It's a good thing, really, that you've got such a large family to—" The rest, which he had to admit to himself probably would've been sub par considering how sluggish his brain was working, was lost as his breath was forcibly expelled under Ron's blow to his stomach.
"You're good, Malfoy. Always were with your stories," Ron said hotly, "You on a first name basis with her? Yeah, I bet."
Another fist to the stomach and Draco was seeing black spots in front of his eyes. He was wheezing rather pathetically as well. Even if he'd been able to speak, his snarky comments were at a definite end.
"Come on, Ronald," one of the twins mocked good naturally, "Is that all the harder you can hit? We would've been better off bringing Ginny!"
"I've been waiting six years for this," Ron was shaking his head with a sated look on his face.
This time Ron didn't bother with the stomach as he moved his aim up. Draco's lung consequently felt like it had imploded, and he fought to breath at all. The twins had to shift their grip to keep him from sinking.
"Ron, this isn't what we came here for—" Neville insisted from somewhere off to the side. Ron answered with a vaguely angry and incomprehensible retort.
"Told you we shouldn't've brought him." Draco caught one of the twins whisper.
"Come on, Ron!" the other twin ignored the remark and urged his younger brother on.
"Let him go!"
There was a shocked moment where Ron froze, one hand cocked and the other on Malfoy's chest, marking out his next intended target. In fact, everything seemed to have stopped, though due to what little Draco could see, this was mostly communicated to him through Ron's suddenly petrified body language.
"Stop it, all of you!" A horrified voice commanded. It couldn't have possibly belonged to Longbottom for more than a few reasons.
As though it might assuage them of any guilt, the twins abruptly released him. He tried and mostly succeeded in landing gently on his hands and knees.
When he could look up, he found a very livid Hermione Granger glaring at all of them, seemingly at once, if that was possible.
It was like being back at school, never mind that they had more or less kicked her out of their precious little circle. Despite this, no one dared to say a word as she stiffly marched up.
"Have you all lost your minds?" she demanded.
"He's a Death Eater—" the black haired boy started hesitantly, sounding more than a little confused. He likely didn't even know who she was.
"No, he isn't!" Hermione cut off any argument that they might've mustered.
She pointedly looked away from them and consequently at him. He was almost satisfied at the shocked expression she gave. Marching towards him with her chin in the air, she only gave the barest sidelong glance at Ron when he started.
"Hermione?" Ron asked weakly, apparently still very much stunned.
No matter how hard Draco tried to feel otherwise, that single word was probably one of the brightest points of the entire day. He needed to doubt no further that the Golden Three would all kiss and make up eventually. And that made him about as happy as he could be at the moment. That and her coming back, of course.
"Can you walk?" she asked him quietly, privately.
He'd had just about enough of telling the truth lately. He couldn't talk, but he gave his best nod.
Apparating straight to a feather bed and slipping into hibernation sounded pretty good, but he settled for letting her help him to his feet and limp away from them. They didn't say anything else, and he managed to only glare at them a little. He knew the events of the past few minutes were more than enough.
"Head for the woods," he murmured, resisting the urge to look back as they neared the edge of town. Making it that far would be quite a feat.
"No," she replied firmly as she continued to struggle with him.
"What do you mean no?" he asked angrily. "The woods are the safest—"
"Keep quiet, you're half out of your mind as it is," she ordered, "I've got a portkey."
"Are you crazy?" he forced her to a stop and carefully slipped to his knees. "I can't use a portkey like this."
"No kidding," she rolled her eyes, "It's a soft landing portkey that—What am I telling this to you for, anyway? Just keep quiet, I've got everything under control."
"No problem." He gratefully settled back the rest of the way to the ground as she dug through her bag.
He caught her muttering under her breath as she worked, and he distinctly caught references to him not eating lately and her being able to carry him.
"What was that?" he intoned, not able to keep from feeling happy despite himself. Nearly elated, actually.
"I said be quiet," she said sternly.
He couldn't help from smiling. "I did always want a woman that I couldn't push around."
She carefully made sure not to look up from what she was doing. It was a risky comment, but embarrassing himself wasn't as high up on his priorities as usual. Things like passing out ranked much higher.
And he did just that, sometime after he had whispered thank you to her, probably more than once, and sometime before the portkey carried them both away.