Slowly, ever so slowly, blurred outlines trickled into Harry's consciousness until he blinked them away like tears. His vision swam, shades of shadow and the occasional artificial light shuddering before his eyes.
The soft rumble of movement shivering through his body told him that he was in a car, and the smooth blackness of leather against his cheek told him that it was an expensive one. Harry blinked again. His skull was aching.
A crushing hand tightened around his bicep, and Harry's defensive instinct kicked in so that he wrenched away as if on autopilot.
"Hold him."
A robed figure on either side of him pinned him against the cool carseat, unrelenting as Harry struggled sluggishly. Groping fingers grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking his face upward painfully.
Reclining on the stretch of leather opposite was yet another shadowy figure, body language a picture of boredom. The Hummer took a corner smoothly, and a glowing streetlamp bobbed past long enough to illuminate the stranger's face.
Harry stared indifferently at his amused captor. No wonder he'd mistaken him for a woman - his blonde hair gleamed as it spilled out of the confines of his hood.
"So sorry about all this," Malfoy drawled, lips twisted in a characteristic smirk. The half-light of the streetlamps hit the angles of his hollowed face, so that he appeared skeletal.
Harry remained silent. The bulky figure to his left still had his hair in a vice-like grip, jutting his chin out and exposing the vulnerable flesh of his throat. He was painfully aware of it.
Draco Malfoy chuckled darkly, and slipped a slim silver case out from beneath the seat, his grey eyes never leaving Harry's tense face. He brushed the hood back with long, gloved fingers and Harry found his mouth twisting into a grimace of dislike as he surveyed his boyhood enemy. He should have finished the bastard off when he had the chance, when he was weak and any power he did have was in the classroom alone.
"Your face will stick that way, Potter," Draco said lazily, unclipping the case and beginning to attend to its contents.
Harry glared acidly back at his reflection in the sheen of the case's surface. Then he cast his eyes around the interior of the car, around the black leather and cloaked figures, trying to form some kind of plausible escape route in his mind. Maybe...maybe if he took them by surprise, pulled away from them and opened the car door before they could grab a hold of him? Harry winced internally. It wasn't the best idea he'd ever had - he would be falling out of a speeding vehicle, hitting tarmac at around 80mph, but anything was better than this. Harry took a breath and chanced a subtle shift of his shoulders, checking the guards' attentiveness.
It was a mistake; the fist at his neck brought his face down brutally onto his own kneecaps, and Harry felt his nose blossom with blood as his glasses clattered off his face and onto the rumbling car floor. The guard wrenched Harry's head upward again with a sickening click of his neck, and he could feel tears of pain blur momentarily in his eyes as Malfoy's face swam before them.
"Tut tut, Potter. I was expecting more of you," he purred, before taking Harry's jawbone between the elegant gloved fingers of one hand. Harry could taste the coppery tang of his own blood.
"Surely you know when you're beaten?" Draco inquired, staring earnestly into Harry's blurred eyes.
Then Harry felt the needle in his throat, pushing determinedly and painfully into his veins. He gave an involuntary gasp of horror, and tried to yank away from Malfoy's iron grip, away from the other hand wielding the syringe. Draco dug his fingertips into Harry's skin, leaving deep red marks, and hissed viciously into his ear, "Potter, don't be stupid. I have a hyperdermic needle in your neck."
Harry felt Draco's hot breath on his skin, felt the foreign intrusion of metal in his flesh, felt liquid seeping into his bloodstream. Nausea crept up to meet him.
Malfoy removed the empy syringe from Harry's throat, where the vein was raised in an angry bruise-blue against the pale skin, and Harry slumped forward and began to gag drily, coughing as his stomach tried to vomit up food he hadn't eaten.
Draco ignored this, disposing of the needle in a plastic bag and leaning back to admire his handiwork. The guards either side of Harry had released him tentatively, and Malfoy addressed them softly, and without holding either of their gazes.
"Vincent. Blaise. I think it is best that you leave Potter and I."
Harry was still slumped like a failed, stringless puppet, gulping raggedly as he battled to breath.
"I'll see you at the site." Draco continued quietly, watching the ex-Gryffindor.
There was silence for a moment, then both the hooded figures Disapparated with a crack like a whip.
Harry's hands were trembling violently as he clawed frantically at his throat, pale fingers scrabbling across the raised veins. Unruffled, Draco opened the tinted window a fraction to allow a teasing blast of cool night air to mingle with the heavy dryness within the car, and stared out of the glass at the passing world.
"I won't lie to you, Potter."
The blonde's voice was brusque, but Harry made no reply but a shuddering breath.
"This will not be the first time you experience this...unpleasantness."
Harry struggled to focus with watering eyes on Malfoy's face, but everything was lurching sickeningly. His head was pounding nearly beyond endurance, his limbs were leaden, his stomach churning. Blood was seeping into his dry mouth, his throat was rapidly closing up. The world darkened and then became unbearably light, as though someone were playing with a light-switch, as he passed in and out of consciousness. Sweat trickled from his brow, mingling with the blood and making him wretch painfully again with a muted, agonized scream.
Impatiently, Draco shifted so that he now sat beside the convulsing ex-Gryffindor on the bloodstained leather. More roughly than was absolutely necessary, he grabbed Harry by a shaking shoulder and forced him to rest his head on Draco's own robed lap. The dark-haired man twitched in response.
Tense with annoyance, Draco snapped, "Compose yourself, Potter." Harry was still clutching his throat, balled up with pain with his boiling face sticking to the material of Malfoy's robes.
"What have...what...?" Blood sprayed from his sticky lips as he summoned his strength to speak.
Draco had his eyes closed, a faint line of irritation between his eyebrows, like someone who is having trouble sleeping. "It's not poison, Potter," He supplied wearily, absent-mindedly stroking the hair from Harry's sweaty forehead. "You're not dying, although you feel like it."
"I'm...going to k-...kill you..." Harry hissed from between bloodstained teeth.
"Is that so?" Draco sounded amused.
"I...s-swear...to God..."
Draco placed two gloved fingers beneath the bloodied chin on his lap, turning Harry's face toward his own with a practiced ease that comes of the incredibly powerful. The Boy Who Lived's famous eyes were wild and clouded, unfocused and full of angry, pained tears. They looked like leaves submerged beneath stirred water.
"Play nice, Potter."
Boredly, he released Harry's face and pushed the man's limp body, hard, from his lap. The ex-Gryffindor crumpled on the floor at Draco's feet and was silent.
Draco lit a cigarette.