I have absolutely no idea how to rate this one. T or higher, I'd say. WARNING for unhappy ending.

"Hey! Anyone there? Anyone?" my voice breaks on the last word and normally I'd be mortified if anyone had heard it. I don't care now though. I just want someone to answer me. It's so dark, everything is dark and damp and it smells funny. I wish I knew where I am. I wish I wasn't so alone.

It feels like I've been here for an eternity, even though it's probably not been even an hour yet. To think, that only an hour ago I was at the Manor, preparing to apparate out to meet up with Pansy for our scheduled luncheon. Instead of ending up at the apparation point in Diagon Alley, I ended up here though. Where ever "here" is.

I can't stop the sob that escapes me. It's humiliating, I pride myself in not having cried since that one time that I don't want to think about. When Potter of all people had walked in on me. Father always told me that crying is a sign of weakness. He told me that Malfoy's don't cry. Still, I can't help the tear that leaves my eye and slowly travels down my chin. What has happened? Where am I? Why can't I find anyone else? Why can't I hear anything other than myself breathing and moving around?

I stand up again, from the kneeling position on the ground that I slumped down in a while ago. The mud is slippery under my feet, and keeping upright is made even harder from the darkness. I reach out with my hands, trying to find something to steady myself against, or better even - something that will tell me where I am. There is nothing though. Only emptiness surrounds me.

I stumble forward a few steps, hands feeling around in the air but touching nothing. Slowly I walk forward - or at least I hope it's forward, I have no way to know for certain. I know that I am moving, but nothing changes around me to give me any indication whether or not I actually make it anywhere. The darkness is still complete and I can detect no change in the muddy ground under my feet. The smell seems to be slowly dissipating though, but that's probably just me getting used to it.

I wish I had my wand. I had it when I apparated, but when I landed here in the darkness, it was gone. I've been practicing casting wandless spells, but with limitless success. Now as I walk in the darkness I concentrate on that one spell that used to seem to insignificant to me, and now is the only one I want to cast. "Lumos," I chant over and over again, trying to channel my magic to cast it without my wand. There's not even a spark.

My legs are beyond tired, but I keep pushing forward. The ground is still muddy and the darkness seems to be without an end. With arms stretched out I have not yet touched anything. Not a tree, not a wall, nothing. Nor have I stumbled on any stones, bushes or sidewalks. I haven't felt like I've been walking uphill nor downhill. I've reached down to touch the ground a couple of times. The only thing I feel is slippery, wet mud. That seems to be the only thing there is.

I think it's been hours since I last shouted out for someone to hear me. I stopped as each time the disappointment at not getting an answer got harder to bear. There is no echo, my voice just goes out there in the quiet darkness. I imagine it traveling the grounds, the only sound this place have ever heard. I imagine it getting thinner and thinner as this world starved on sounds eats it up. I wish there was an echo. At least then I could hear something else than my own voice as it leaves me only to leave no track of having existed.

There is no sobs leaving me now. No tears running down my cheeks. I guess Father would be proud, but really I just don't care. I only walk and walk in this endless sameness.

I fall down in the mud. My legs just won't carry me any longer. I try to crawl forward as stopping feels like giving up. Stopping feels like dying. As long as I move forward I can tell myself that I am doing something. As long as I move I am alive in this nothingness. As long as I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, I won't feel the gnawing hunger or the desperate dryness in my throat.

A distant part of me thinks it's a good thing no one is here to see me as I lick the muddy ground, desperate to get some moisture on my tongue. The hunger is gone now, the only thing I know is thirst. I bury my face in the mud trying to suck up some water from the mud but end up choking on it instead. Gasping for air I roll over. I want to keep moving, but my limbs won't collaborate anymore. I lay there on my back, wanting for it all to just be over.

They call me a coward. They don't know the story behind my choices. I did what I did for survival. As they fought their battles, I fought mine.

With my dying strength, I still fight for my survival. Slytherins might be many things, but we aren't quitters. We scheme and plan and manipulate to get our way. We don't go into fights blindly, we go with a plan. We go in for the win. Giving up is not an option.

I try to draw a deeper breath, just to get the strength to turn around and make it forward. Who knows, maybe just a few steps from here there will be something. Some change in this endless hell that will take me away from here. My throat is too dry though and I end up coughing instead. I try to lift a hand to cover my mouth - Mother was always on me about remembering my manners, I guess not even hell can take away her teachings from me. My strength fails me though and my arm flops useless back to the ground.

As I close my eyes I'm dimly aware of contemplating the lack of change in darkness that action has. Eyes open or closed, there is nothing I can see.

I was sure I was dead. I was sure I had struggled till the bitter end of it all. Then I became aware again. There is water touching my lips, my face, my hands. Drops and drops of water. I open my eyes, but to my dismay there is still only darkness. The rain falls all around me though and I open my mouth to the sky, feeling it run down my throat. I drink and drink and laugh from the share joy of not being thirsty anymore.

When the thirst has left me, I drink the rain to fill my stomach. For a moment, I feel strengthened. Then, reality sets in. I sit on the ground in the downpour. I sharpen my ears, listening. I can hear the rain as it softly hits the ground, but nothing else. There is no wind, nor does the sound of the rain carry an echo with it. Like it was with my voice, it is like this place is eating up the sound of the drops hitting the ground.

Neither can I see the rain. I see no reflections in the drops of water around me. Feeling around me on the ground, I feel only the same mud as before. There is no puddles forming, nor is the mud getting detectably wetter than before. With my hands I dig a small hole in the ground, to make a puddle. When I reach down a moment later to check if it fills up, the hole is gone. There is only a flat surface of mud to be found.

Soon, the rain stops. Everything is now as it was before, only now I'm no longer thirsty. I struggle to get up on my feet. With no way of knowing what direction I came from, I start walking. I figure it doesn't matter if I walk back to where I came from, or if I walk in circles. Nothing seems to matter. It's not like I'm getting anywhere.

There really is no use in walking at all, but I just cannot give up.

The hunger returns first, then the thirst. I feel my strength slowly abandoning me, just like the last time. Just like the last time, I push forward for as long as I can. This time the rain starts the moment I fall down. I drink greedily, afterward wondering if there is any nutrition in this rain as well, as it seems to take away my hunger as well as my thirst.

The fifth time it starts to rain, I curse myself as I helplessly follows my instinct to drink. I cannot take this any longer, still I can't resist drinking. I can't stop my fight for survival.

I wish I had something tangible to fight. Instead the only thing I can do is push forward.

One foot in front of the other.

The only thing I know is that there is some plan and reason to this place. That's the only explanation to why it always starts to rain the moment that I get to the brink of dying from thirst. I just don't know what to do with this knowledge.

I can hardly remember anything else than this blackness. I try to think about my home, my friends and my family. They all seem so long gone to me now. The face of Mother remains clear the longest.

I've lost count of the times it's rained when I realize I haven't yet slept here in this place. Unless you count that time before the first rain, when I closed my eyes. I'm sure I have been here for weeks by now, but still I cannot remember sleeping. It must be weeks, I think, although time seems irrelevant here. Still, the body can survive for days without food or water, and it always takes me to the brink of death before the rain comes and restores me. So it must be weeks by now.

I lay down in the mud, determined to sleep. I close my eyes, but sleep isn't even near. I feel beyond exhausted, but not sleepy. Stubbornly, I remain where I am. I will sleep.

When the thirst returns this time, I'm still laying in the mud. I haven't slept though. As the thirst grows, I find I cannot remain still. I'm forced to get up and move, or the thirst become even more of a torture.

I don't sleep here. Apparently there is something about this place that takes away my need for sleep. That is the second thing I learn about my own, personal hell.

I don't know what to do with that knowledge either.

I haven't talked to anyone for ages. At this point, I'm not sure if I'd even be able to produce words, given the opportunity. I tried, a while ago, to speak up into the darkness. The harsh sounds my throat made seemed too loud in my ears. There was no words in that sound though. I can here the words in my head, but I've been quiet for so long now that I appear to have lost the ability to produce them.

What is light? I try to remember. I feel my face with my fingers, trying to picture what I must look like, if there were light and I had a mirror to see myself in. I just cannot imagine the sight I must be.

Who am I?

One foot in front of the other.

There is mud on the ground.

All is quiet.

I breath. I am.

What am I?

Rain. Wet.

One foot. Other foot.

Mud. Ground.

Wet.

Quiet. Dark. Wet.

Am I?

Up. Foot. Down. Rain.

Up. Foot. Other Foot. Mud. Drink.

Up. Foot. Foot. Rain.

Up. Down. Rain.

Four months, twelve days and thirteen hours. That was how long Harry had been sitting by Draco's side now, holding his hand. People had come and gone, they had tried to get him to leave for a short while at least. They hadn't succeeded. Harry slept sitting in his chair, never letting go of his lover's hand.

He tried not to think what Draco might be going through, trapped inside his own mind in a nightmarish reality conjured by the twisted mind of Jara Nordland. The witch had turned out to be one of those twisted "fans" of his, that thought she had helped him, making Draco first forget all about Harry's even existing, and then trapping him like this. When caught, she had gone on and on about how she had saved Harry from being bound to a Death Eater.

Harry had thought everyone had gotten over the chock of their "savior" falling in love with and then marrying Draco Malfoy, a confirmed (ex) Death Eater, but apparently he had been wrong. Jara had been sent to Azkaban but to no avail - she wouldn't or couldn't undo her curse. One month into Draco's entrapment in his own mind, she had killed herself, ending all hope for any assistance from her.

Hermione was of course doing her best, as was many others. As time moved on, there came other emergencies that needed to be dealt with and he started to get excuses as people was taken of Draco's case and put to work on other things that was deemed to have more hope in succeeding. Soon, Hermione would be the only one left. Harry knew he could count on her, she wouldn't give up. An unsolvable problem was to her like catnip to a cat.

Still, even if - when - she one day would be able to break the curse, there was no telling what Harry would be getting back. What sort of nightmare Jara had trapped Draco in. His body might be cursed to regenerate, but what of his mind? Harry already knew he had been made to forget all about them, but that he could handle. He could remind Draco of who he was and what they had together. He was not so sure though, if Draco would have a mind to heal, even if they got him back.

Still, Harry couldn't leave. If he'd known Draco was only unaware, sleeping or unconscious, he might have been able to leave every now and then. As it was, he knew that that was not the case. He might not know the nature of the nightmare, but he knew it to be the worst kind of hell. The least he could do was be there, hold his hand. Even if Draco didn't know it. He'd suffer, as the love of his life suffered.

Together, alone. Each in their own, living nightmare.