x
The sleek, monstrous car had left civilisation at some point in the early night, as dusk's watery blues bled into a deeper, velvet black. Stars, like sprays of mercury, timidly appeared in the sky's suffocating folds, only just visible between the searching and bony fingers of stripped trees. The terrain was rough and treacherous, flat land suddenly bucking into unexpected, looming hills. Loose rubble flicked up against the flawless black exterior of the Hummer, leaving stark silver scars, and rebellious sprigs of dull heather were trampled beneath the tires.
Suddenly, the rocky hill petered out into a flat crescent, still flanked by raw, thorny foliage. The dim ruby of the brake-lights glowed in an otherwise monochrome night.
Draco Malfoy opened the door brusquely with one gloved hand; the other clutched the neck of an unconscious Harry's robes. The brunette's limp body was abandoned on the ground, neck twisted unnaturally, skin tinted with blue.
"Leave. Now." Draco shot at the driver behind the dark glass. "If Potter's lackeys are indeed tracking us, they'll know we've stopped."
Obediently, the Hummer took a skillful and speedy U-turn and barreled off into the dark.
Harry shifted fractionally, and Draco glanced at him with no concern.
"Looks like it's you and me for a little while, Potter." He grinned sardonically. "Walkies."
x
It was the erratic rocking movement that prompted Harry's consciousness. Opening his eyes blearily, the first thing he saw was the crumbling earth beneath him, and the sound of Draco's feet crunching against the gravelly soil was loud in his exhausted brain.
His breathing was restricted. Harry's aching eyes darted around, and he realised with a thrill of horror that he was slung, like a dead fox, over Malfoy's shoulder.
As though responding to Harry's silent realisation, the blonde roughly shifted the weight of the slumped body on his back with a jerking movement as he continued, machine-like, to climb the hill. Harry could hear the slight shallowness of Draco's breathing; not nearly as laboured a breath as carrying an unconscious man uphill required. His own heartbeat began to accelerate painfully, adrenaline surging through him.
It was just him and Malfoy. Wildly, he searched the surrounding moors with his stare, willing his head to remain still. If Malfoy realised that he was awake, catching him off guard would be next to impossible.
Nobody. Just a slightly out of breath blonde carrying a silent brunette up a path surrounded by coarse heather and weather-beaten ferns.
Harry lay perfectly still, waiting.
The night breeze stirred his hair a little. The air was cool; he could feel the exposed flesh at the nape of his neck and along his forearms begin to prickle gently. It smelt fresh, like snow.
Draco paused, perched precariously on an uneven cluster of mossy rock.
Immediately, Harry lashed out wildly at the back of Draco's neck, putting all his fury into the blow. For a split second, he thought he'd been successful - his captor seemed to crumple momentarily - but then he felt an iron cold grip close on his exposed wrist. Suddenly and impossibly, Harry was flipped, was flying into the air, thudding heart leaping painfully in his mouth.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Just as suddenly, he froze, hanging suspended in the cool dusk.
"Oh, yes..." Draco's chuckle was dark, smooth and bitter as coffee. He twirled his outstretched wand between thin, gloved fingertips, regarding Harry's absurdly petrified body as it floated above the ground. The blood was rushing to Harry's head, flushing his face a blotchy purple. "Yes, I thought we might have been soft on you."
Had he the physical ability to respond, rather than to dangle helplessly with his limbs mid-flail, Harry wouldn't have.
"Of course," Draco continued casually, enjoying Harry's forced silence, "The Chosen One would thwart our plan, would fight the effects of the serum. But then..." He grinned, lazily and cruelly. "I suppose that is why you are crucial to our plan. Your...extreme nature."
Harry's mind raced beneath his frozen expression. It was rapidly becoming evident that his entire kidnapping was perhaps more than a mere hostage situation.
Draco strolled slowly past him, the wind stirring his silver hair and the watching ferns, until he was out of sight. The only thing Harry could see now was the vast emptiness of the dark, cold moors.
"Luckily," Harry heard the quiet drawl behind him, "your old friend Draco brings spares."
A feeling of terror rose uncontrollably like bile in Harry as the needle pierced the flesh of his neck once more, and the hellish sickness overwhelmed him.
x
The crumbling old mansion was surprising; it rose suddenly, like a hunchbacked corpse, from the heather-clad scrub of the moors, all eroded turrets and swarthes of comforting, dark-green ivy. The stone it was comprised of gleamed like brushed steel in the moonlight, so that it seemed to glow like a beacon despite its gothic hostility. The spells and charms placed on it to make the looming lump of stone and foliage invisible to Muggles and unplottable to wizards were barely visible, shimmering like a soap bubble.
Within its cold walls, Draco had disposed of Harry's lolling and unconscious form, donating it to a couple of Death-eaters with strict instructions. They had dipped their heads in respect, and dragged the blue-tinted body away.
Now he sat in a cavernous study with a domed ceiling and walls that were paneled with quietly rotting mahogany. Books filled with dust and magic long-forgotten nestled in the shelves, their leather covers once jewel-bright, now faded and falling apart. The dangling chandelier, its glass beads cracked and encrusted with dirt, was supplied only with mutilated stumps of wax for candles, and so remained dark and unused. Instead, a fire roared mutinously in the monstrous fireplace, sending patterns of light across Draco's chair, which was made of skeletal wood and worn velvet.
Without warning, the fire suddenly exploded with violet flames - the colour of an illegal transportation - and Draco stood almost instantaneously as Lord Voldemort stepped from the licking, hissing confines of the stone fireplace.
The Dark Lord seemed to shrink the room, such was his black and commanding presence. The infamous, snake-like face was hidden beneath a hood, but the thin white hands protruded from the liquid-like folds of cloak as he swept into the cold study. Draco dropped to one knee as expected, blonde hair falling into his face as his head dipped.
"My lord."
"I trust," Voldemort's voice was thin and sharp as a rapier, "that the plan was carried out accordingly."
Draco stood, his head still bowed slightly in reverence.
"It was, my lord. Potter is being secured as we speak."
"Have security checks been carried out to ensure that you were not followed?"
"They have. Potter's associates immediately Disapparated to the Ministry, and have not left, if our trackers are correct."
The Dark Lord paced slowly, apparently deep in thought. When he next spoke, there was a bite of a smile in his voice.
"Well done, Draco. It is most imperative that Potter's medication is applied flawlessly; we cannot afford to take any risks. Ensure that his mental state is entirely broken before we begin the next stage of treatment."
"I shall oversee the entire proceedings, my lord."
Lord Voldemort paused, and the fire glinted in his eyes, still masked by the cloak.
"I shall assume, of course, that your own medication is still being taken, Draco?"
The blonde fixed Voldemort with a piercing stare, that from a lesser man would have smacked of disrespect. "Of course, my lord. I understand fully the importance of my role."
The cloaked man smirked beneath his hood, and it was apparent in his voice, "Yes...I should not have doubted you, Draco. You are, of course, my most successful experiment."
Draco bowed his head again.
"I suppose," Voldemort continued, "that in a way, you are the only wizard alive that possesses anything close to my...rather unique gift. Death is, to us, simply another opponent to overcome."
Draco was silent. Voldemort turned, suddenly, and in one jerky motion of his pale hand threw a handful of powder into the flame. The flame turned deep emerald, and then abruptly flickered like a faulty television screen, until it glowed violet.
"I shall be checking on your progress regularly, Draco." Voldemort said simply, striding towards the beckoning fire. "And do not forget the consequences of failure."
"Never, my lord."
x
"A room with a view; you lucky bastard, Potter."
Harry did not answer, and Draco did not expect him to. He'd apparently been silent for hours now.
The arched, grimy windows did indeed open out onto the unravelling moors, which were now shrouded in darkness and fingers of moonshine. Draco wandered casually over to them, clasping a wrought iron goblet of red wine in one cold hand and dragging the heavy velvet curtains across the window panes with the other. The room immediately fell into still darkness. Draco could hear Harry's faint breathing quicken across the room.
Draco, unaffected by the pitch black of the room, took a sip of wine thoughtfully and listened to Harry's ragged breaths. The brunette was not unconscious, simply refusing to communicate. Since Draco's brief consultation with the Dark Lord, Harry had woken to find himself in a cold and aged room, hung with dozens of cracked and spotted mirrors. From gilt, iron and glass frames in all shapes and sizes they stared at him, reflecting his own haggard and frightened face. He watched himself struggle at the unforgiving chains that fastened him to the posts of the magnificent bed, which was strewn with freezing sheets and silver velvet curtains. He watched his own wrists begin to bleed as he wrestled them raw to no avail. He watched the Death Eaters that came in clinical couples to enjoy the sight of him, silently spread-eagled on the thin sheets with a stomach that clenched in terror every time the mysterious serum to which he was subject was mentioned. And now he could see nothing.
The blonde sauntered casually towards the bed, which he had no trouble seeing despite the gloom. He heard Harry's breath hitch slightly as he set the wine-filled goblet down loudly on the ebony cabinet beside the bed, and sat comfortably on the lumpy mattress, somewhere near Harry's waist. The chains clinked softly as Draco shifted contentedly on the bed's edge.
"So, Potter. Are you going to talk to me?"
Silence. Draco listened to Harry's breathing, which was determinedly calm, and the muffled thud of his heartbeat, which was anything but.
"No?"
Silence. Draco could see Harry's pale face through the dark. His eyes were darting to and fro, trying to discern Draco's whereabouts in the blackness. Slowly, he felt within the folds of his own cloak, until his fingers found a cold wad of metal - a Zippo lighter. He withdrew it and flicked it open, clicking it to life. The sudden flare of light made Harry flinch away instinctively, resulting in Draco's smirk.
"Touchy little thing, aren't you?"
Harry's jaw tightened. The flame's light highlighted the angles of his face, the dark circles beneath his eyes, the vulnerable blue veins raised on his neck. Draco found them oddly appealing.
"What are you doing to me?" Harry's voice was stiff, cracked with the effort of speaking.
Draco paused, and let go of the lighter, which remained hovering in mid-air. "What are we doing?" He repeated.
"Yes. Why don't you just kill me?" Harry was impatient; his voice was tight, strangled.
Draco shifted again on the bed, and Harry's eyes glanced down from where they had been fixed firmly on the canopy of the four-poster.
"Because, Potter, there is no sense in letting you go to waste."
"Oh, for fuck's SAKE, Malfoy --" Harry's sentence was cut off as he broke into painful coughing. His throat was obviously damaged.
Draco made a face that was half grimace, half grin, and reached out for the goblet of wine.
"You can cut that out right now, boy."
Carefully, he took Harry's face in one hand, and tipped some of the deep red liquid into Harry's mouth. The first few mouthfuls Harry simply coughed back out, spraying wine over his own face, staining his lips and the pale bedsheets. After a while, however, he swallowed, his throat convulsing with the effort.
Satisfied, Draco allowed him to catch his breath, wiping wine off his own hand with the sheets.
"As I was saying. You, Potter, are too good to waste, because you happen to be a source of great power. Not skill, and certainly not sense, but there is raw magical power there. And we believe that we can harness it."
Harry closed his eyes, and did not respond. There were tiny drops of wine caught in his eyelashes, and a tiny burgundy river was tracing its way slowly down his chin and onto his throat.
"Not," Draco smirked cruelly, "that you look particularly powerful at the moment."
"Leave me alone." Harry snarled instantly, without opening his eyes. His cheeks had flushed in anger and humiliation.
"Harry, Harry..." Draco tutted in mock pity, "you didn't honestly think I was only here for a chat, did you?"
Harry tensed visibly. He could hear the ebony cabinet being opened, could feel his heartbeat begin to lurch in fear, opened his eyes to see Draco finish assembling the damned syringe. He thought he might vomit any moment.
"This," murmured Draco, as he slid the needle into Harry's wine-stained throat, "won't hurt a bit."
He left Harry arching and screaming on the bed.
x
A/N: Gahhh, I hate this friggin' story! Please please tell me if you're confused beyond all belief, and I'll try and make things a bit simpler. Also, how hard did I have to reign in the HxD Lemon Monster in the last scene? Pretty darn hard, I can tell you. ;D