Revenge
(Draco)
He fell down a spiral ever more vertiginous, faster and deeper into a bottomless darkness that seemed about to swallow him.
When suddenly, the fall gentled and gentled, until it wasn't as much falling as it was floating down. Like a feather softly descending thrown… not air, but a black and thick liquid, that enveloped him in homely feelings.
It could have been black coffee, or an exotic shampoo.
He had a vague recollection it was a long time since he experienced those things, but the memory disappeared a second later, as he continued falling slower and slower.
At the bottom, far below him, he caught the sight of soft light, not unlikely that of flame through smoked glass.
Curious, Draco manoeuvred gracefully in the air, watching the strange phenomenon as he came nearer and nearer.
His ears got clogged as when one descends into deep waters, or ascends into a too high height. He shook his head, upset with the sensation, and the plugs eased with a soft "Pop".
With it, sound reached him.
Until then, there had been only silence, so Draco strained to make it out, anxious to understand the different vibrations.
There was an oldie song, intoned by an age-worn male voice, rich and thick like a good tobacco leaf, and the screeching of an antique violin.
Old music instruments always sang better than new ones -more felt and knowing-, and Draco fancied he could smell darkened ancient varnish, and delicate dust, in the melody.
Bit by bit, he came aware of other voices beside the song; conversations, laughs and lost words. Here and there, a curious collage of accents, deep and high, smooth and excited… A lovely cacophony he was sure to have heard before.
But the memories eluded him.
Deeper and deeper below him, other sounds became noticeable; the rasp of chairs against wooden floors, the meeting of metal against pottery, the jingle of glass, the rustle of cloth…
Now he could nearly touch the bottom of the thick liquid he was falling through -an strange deposit like smoked glass- that keep him away from the light shining beyond it.
His feet touched the spongy surface, and he began to sink in it like a spoon on gelatine.
Panic began to rise inside Draco, as he was engulfed inch by inch, and he trashed trying to get free. However, his twisting only managed to sink him faster.
Finally, the substance enveloped him wholly into it's soft deeps.
Draco screamed… would have if he could, as the thickness absorbed something from him. He didn't know what, and the sensation was terrifying. His heart beat faster than the wings of a hummingbird inside his chest, he couldn't breathe, tried desperately to escape…
And then, the bottom of the substance exploded like a bubble, and Draco felt himself fall again for a terrifying second… until his eyelids fluttered open.
"Are you okay, Draco?"
"...Pansy?"- Draco righted himself on the chair he found himself seated in. Where was he? What had happened?
He looked around disoriented. The sounds and voices he had been hearing, came from the people around him.
"Where are at a… cafe?" he muttered barely loud enough to be heard, as his heart calmed down progressively.
Pansy nodded with a sassy smile curving her lips, "You fell asleep again? Seriously Draco, if you keep studying so much, you will fall asleep the exam day."- she playfully tapped him in the forehead with one of her fingertips. And Draco had the odd feeling he had already lived that moment.
"It was… a dream?", the blond looked around again. It was a somewhat antique place. In a corner there was an old man playing a violin, and singing nicely a song he thought he knew, but couldn't remember… even so, he knew the melody to be the one he had listened to when falling.
"Draco, Pansy! Make me place, camo on.", the cheery voice of his best friend took him from his thoughts.
Pansy began picking up the books, scrolls, feathers and inkwells, Draco hadn't been aware were in the table. And Blaise put the tray he was carrying in the gap created in the island of books, letting Draco see what he had brought; a chocolate smoothie (the favourite of Blaise), one of strawberry flavour (the favourite of Pansy), and a last one of vanilla (Draco's own favourite). With them there was a plate full of a variety of cookies and chocolates. And the cream that topped the glasses was as thick and smooth as butter.
"There, your favourite." Blaise gifted him a brilliant smile, handing him the vanilla one. Still disoriented, Draco extended his hand to take it... and for a second, the face of his best friend was eclipsed by the same face stained by crimson tears.
"Blaise?" His voice sounded lost, even to his ears.
"What's the matter Draco? You feeling unwell?" with a small gesture of worry, a tanned hand touched his forehead. It was warm and smooth, and it's touch calmed him.
"It's nothing, just a bad dream." smiled kindly and took the offered smoothie. It had only been a bad dream… was it not?
The taste of vanilla and cinnamon flooded his senses, deleting all his worries. His friends chatted between themselves about the finals. Around them nearly everyone else where other students of Hogwarts, that had come to Hogsmeade in their free weekend. What could there be wrong?
Carefully he ignored the feeling in his chest, that spoke something was missing. Everything was perfect… but he missed something.
oOo
Draco's body was icy cold, his chest still, his breathing extinguished. His time forcibly stopped. Forever trapped in that last moment he closed his eyes.
Griever enveloped him with his arms, his head resting on his chest.
It wasn't much, but Griever satisfied himself with having Draco at his side. At least for now.
They were in Griever's rooms, the Lord reclined against the headboard of the enormous bed, and the fragile blond lying comfortably on his arms. This way, without tears marring his cheeks, not laments on his lips, Griever could lie to himself, and think Draco was there because he had chosen to, maybe because he felt something for him.
He caressed the smooth skin of his cheek, and kissed the icy and delicious lips of the sleeping beauty.
As Griever already expected, Draco didn't wake up, there wasn't even a flutter of delicate silver lashes.
The blonde wouldn't wake up, not for him at least.
For a moment, the Lord felt the urge of screaming in frustration, but he restrained himself, unwilling to break the illusion of peace he had created. Instead, he kissed the fair crown, sweet and caringly. And asked himself what the angelical blonde would be dreaming of, and wished it was about him.
oOo
Blaise's mane, his beautiful black curls, tousled by the wind of the incoming storm, caught for an instant her gaze. She didn't have strength left. A vision of pearl-white seafoam, tangled in those jet black locks assaulted Hermione like a premonition.
Hundred of meters below them, the foam of the waves, only white shadows through the black night, seemed to want to take him for themselves. Drag Blaise from her weakening grab, take him into their deeps, and cradle the vampire in the embrace of a lover, to forever keep him from her.
The pale wrist slipped from her grasp...
"NO!"
For a second, time seemed to stop into an agonising moment; the abyssal black pupils dilated in naive surprise, the lips beginning to shape a grateful smile… the grab Blaise had in the stone gave out.
Time came back, speeding up dizzily as he fell... his body broke the surface of the brave sea, and was engulfed by the waves.
Mione felt blood slide down her fingers, there were Blaise's claws had bitten. Felt tears burning her cheeks. Her heart shrink nearly into collapse.
She stood motionless at the precipice border… her eyes fixed where the vampire had disappeared.
There, in that last second of desperate craziness, she had felt something… something more intense than anything she had felt before for any other man.
And she had lost him.
Hermione curled her wounded hand against her chest, her lips brushing the gouges on her flesh, intimately, almost reverently, in a kiss full of sadness. The auror knew dozens of spells to ease a wound like that. Hundreds of potions and ointments that could make it disappear like it had never been in the first place. But the mere notion of using them… She took a trembling breath.
Let it heal on its own.
Let it scar, since those marks on her skin would be the only thing left of him for her. The proof of Blaise's sacrifice, and his parting gift.
The first drops of the incoming storm finally started to fall, dampening her mane, and blending with her tears.
oOo
(Griever)
He had sensed clearly when Potter started to change, and his dementors, obedient, had come to his command. The auror would had been devoured, and he could have rested peacefully, knowing no one remained in the world, who could take Draco from him.
But the events hadn't developed as planned.
The tower had trembled, like a big animal that stretches. It's own foundation groaning, sort of uttering a welcome to a master long waited for.
And suddenly, all of Griever's power threads -his commanding of the dementors- had dissolved into nothing.
He didn't need to move from the bed, to sense Potter's aura.
Icy, burning… a terrible flame that could only belong to one. The magic of Gryffindor made into a fathomless darkness, alluring and as vertiginous as an hurricane.
Somehow those pathetic fragments of soul had botched it up… and they would pay.
Griever raised elegantly from the bed, unfolding his aura like a majestic cape of power and darkness. If he was to fight his father, he would do so as who he was; the Lord of the tower.
Yet, he remained an instant more, treasuring with his gaze the slender and moon-pale body abandoned on the worn red velvet quilt. Draco's skin glowed softly in the candlelight, like a gem. His gem. And so he would remain. Griever wouldn't let the auror take Draco from him, even if it meant no seeing him come awake ever again.
Reverently, he touched a kiss to the clear forehead.
"I will be back soon.", he muttered.
His words didn't get a response. Never would.
Silence feed the flames of Griever's hate.
Everything was that man's fault. EVERYTHING.
He came to the window, from where his nemesis could be seen at the broken landing of stone, some floors below. The Lord's hate condensed the glass, and froze every surface in the room with a crystalline sound. The candles were snuffed, dark took the place.
Potter may be powerful, but he didn't have his knowledge, his hundred years practice, and didn't how to master that power to his will.
And he, The Dementor Lord, would make him understand why every living man feared him.
oOo
Harry could feel the darkness pumping through his veins, it's strength present in all atoms of his body. Running through him, possessing him, filling him.
A black tide that murmured like a thousand insects.
Knew he could call and it would surrender to his wishes. It was an intoxicating and dangerous feeling. And for a few minutes he was filled by it, taken, stages by it's current, utterly detached from his surroundings.
The new dementor let himself get drunk in it, be enchanted by the craving for power he found himself under. Harry could devour any soul in Azkaban, greedily take his memories not unlikely a child might with the cookie jar.
Fill himself to the brim, get surfeited to the most absolute satisfaction.
But when took a first step, controlled by the storm in his mind… a memory pierced him like a silver needle.
An image of grey eyes painted in sadness, and full with a broken love, that begged the comfort of his embrace. Draco…
NO!
What had he been doing?
With steely determination Harry reigned in the feelings that had been about to change him into a monster. And they, as if he had passed some unfathomable trial, fled to the recesses of his mind giving back his lucidity.
Stunned, he took in his surroundings, seeing Hermione for the first time, shrunken in herself at the cliff's edge. Looking like a little girl inside a nightmare.
Disregarding the dementors kneeling around him, he crouched at his best friend's side, embraced her, and caressed her hair, as an older brother would have trying to comfort a little sister.
"Harry!", Mione embraced him back with her remaining strength, breaking into hysterical sobs.
Her best friend was cold, but somehow, that searing warm that was intrinsically Harry, was still there, reassuring her, and diminishing the icy sadness inside.
"What has happened?" Harry asked. The velvety caress of his voice, like dark cloth against her mane.
Hermione trembled at the alien quality of his voice. But as long as Harry was Harry, no matter the physical changes he undertook, she would always love him like a brother.
"Zabini…"
Harry followed her gaze to the waves and stones marrying the cliff's bottom… and his arms tightened around her.
The old Slytherin and him never quite got along, but he had been Draco's best friend, and must have meant something for Hermione.
But what comforting words he was to offer died on his lips, when he felt that other presence.
"Hermione, run inside."
The Dementor Lord was there.
He expanded his awareness if the auras and feelings around him -that strange sense all dementors had- he felt the prostrating dementors, his friend.
Harry could feel her memories, like brilliantly coloured candy in a store front. Very enticing.
He threw away his awareness of her, and kept searching, reaching farther with his mental tendrils… and he found it. The source of the terrible aura.
In the tower, behind the grandiose dusty window. Another presence as terrifying as his own, a darkness that threatened to swallow everything in It's pat, studied Harry.
The whisper of despair, hate, anger, accompanying the other like a mantle of power, revolted him. But when he was withdrawing his consciousness, behind the Lord, almost drowned in his heady presence, a small and beautiful like a little star, the brightness of a delicate fragile aura captured his awareness.
It called, whispered for Harry, and besought him cooing for his protection with the weak whimper of a flame that's going out. Sweet, soft, silvery and unsubstantial as moonlight. He had already felt this. Had touched that essence before.
Harry felt his instincts scream in agony. The desire to protect, to care, to love, to make his, that so pure aura burned his insides ... Draco.
A low growl left his throat, threatening. Around him, the dementors raised their heads in expectation.
They couldn't have two masters.
Air itself gasped in horror when both auras clashed. Even at this distance they sought one another in fury, trying to tear each other apart.
"Griever Get down! It Let's get this sorted!' Harry called.
The storm that had been brewing, chose that moment to break into a gust of wind, that swept his words madly toward the tower.
A water curtain burst onto Azkaban drenching everyone with thick raindrops. Sea waves driven by the sudden power of the hurricane, tore savagely against the rocks in a roar of foam and currents.
Harry called for his power, felt it tingling on his fingertips. Blood fast inside his veins. The green ember's of his eyes glowed in the night, his hair and tunic tendrils of darkness twisted by the wind, made him into a portray if craziness..
The Dementor Lord opened the window, and it's shutters knocked against stone walls, without breaking the glass. The magic of Gryffindor permeating it even now.
The powerful Lord of the tower came into the storm.
He descended from the heights as a nightmare's shadow. Gliding through lightning, fog and rain.
Water froze on his robe, creating spectral icicles. His hood's shadows barely concealing the ghost of a sadistic smile.
Both auras twisted and searched, like trying to grab each other.
Green embers, and black wells, locked in a murderous look, challenging through the night.
"Your madness at coming here will destroy you, Potter." the icy whisper did not touch Harry. Their essences too close in power to really be affected.
"Maybe. But I could not abandon Draco to your mercies."
The words, despite the soft murmur of darkness in which they had been sung, came coated in love, passion and protective longing.
They angered Griever as nothing could have.
The sincerity in them, a sharp blade implying he would hurt the fragile blond... And the notion that it had been so... He couldn't stand it.
Griever attacked.
And they tangled in fierce fighting with claws and fangs. Their feral nature laid bare for all to see.
Black blood splattered them both.
Their power dimmed the night swallowing the light of even the smallest star. Lighting and thunder crossed the skies, totally unhinged in searing flashes of light. Hurricane gusts that seemed to want to destroy the prison itself. Waterspouts that barely allowed sight. Giant waves hitting again, and again, against rocks that looked like skeletal fingers...
Nature unleashed in all its monstrous magnificence, responding to the confrontation of two colossal powers.
Griever slammed him with inhuman strength against the prison wall. Chunks of rock fell into the raging sea. Harry groaned as he felt his ribs broken before the impact.
The monster encircled his throat with sharp claws, squeezing with all his strength, seeking to break his neck.
And Harry let him do it. A nightmarys smile gracing his lips, and sharp knife-like teeth showing.
The broken ribs no longer hurt. As the new dementor felt bones crunch under his flesh, rebuilding themselves in a matter of seconds.
With one fluid motion, Harry threw his arm forward through the ribcage of the Lord, just as if it had been dry wood.
They stood, faces only a few centimeters apart, measuring, and knowing that they hated each other. They would kill his opponent if they could. But Dementors could not die.
Thus, this was a duel for the leadership of the tower, and Draco's possession.
Potter's aura lashed out at Griever's own, wrapping it in tendrils threatening to snuff it out. Harry's smile got wider, nearly sensual in his satisfaction.
"Surrender yourself, Griever.", murmured softly, seemingly languorous.
A savage roar broke from the Lord's throat. He would not tolerate it. Would not let his father's newest incarnation take away his leadership… and Draco.
Griever squeezed harder, feeling Potter's neck finally break, and at the same time writing in the agony of his heart getting crushed, and his aura shredded.
He let out a hiss of pain, involuntary and corrosive.
His enemies neck was already healing, as was the pumping inside his ribcage.
Taken by hate and rage, Griever brought Potter near by his tunic, letting his loose savage instinct control his movements.
His lips pressed against his foes in a passionate kiss.
Harry felt the Lord Dementor trying to wrest his soul.
The eagerness with which the monster devoured his memories... That freezing, disgusting, horrible feeling that resembled being crumbled bit by bit, like he was a toast.
Harry roared beastly and struck with all his strength Griever's face. His jaw gave way under the impact, breaking inward, several of his teeth broke and fell out of his mouth in all directions, accompanied by black and sticky blood.
The creature screamed in agony and clutched to his mouth running away from him toward the tower.
For a moment Harry was perplexed by the sudden escape... until he realized where he was going. The window he had entered, gave way to the room where he had sensed Draco's aura.
"NO!", hurried, suddenly afraid.
But when he burst into the room…
The Dementor Lord hovered over an slender body abandoned in the mattress of an enormous bed.
Harry could only see the profile of elegant and fragile limbs, a white, ghostly robe, sharp curves delineating thin pearly skin, and a pallor that contrasted beautifully against the faded red bedspread.
But what broke the fragile wall containing his instincts, that which pushed Harry to be possessed by his darkest emotions, which dragged him into becoming a monster ...
Was the sight of those pale lips ravaged by the shattered mouth of the Lord Dementor. Griever's black blood oozing on the small chin and sunken cheeks.
The star soul being devoured.
Harry snatched him by the hair and away from Draco. Claws embedding cruelly deep in the skull, thick black blood like butterscotch soaking his hand, sliding to his wrist.
Griever hissed through a mouth just beginning to heal, and tried to break free. But Harry threw him against the wall, again, and again, and again, brutally, with the force of a wrecking ball. Until the ground piled with stone rubble, and Griever's limbs were twisted and broken in a tangle of splintered bones poking through torn and bruised flesh.
In the end, Harry lifted him,embedding the claws of his other hand in his cheeks.
Griever moaned in terror, no one, ever, had managed to hurt him so badly.
Potter..
Razor-sharp bones under skin white as marfil, hair turned into absolute blackness, crazy locks thrashing wildly into nonexistent wind, thin lips distended on a smile worthy of a chainsaw, and those eyes... burning green embers of hellfire.
He understood then, why the Avada Kedavra was green, death... was green.
Thin lips seized his shattered mouth, teeth tearing soft flesh. Potter started sucking, ravaging. Swallowing his screams and hisses mercilessly.
Griever could feel it on his lips, in his bones, in his flesh… He was being devoured.
Harry smiled in the kiss, feeling Griever's pain, his despair, his horror.
And did not stop.
He continued even though the claws of the old master dug into his arms, ripping and tearing flesh, even when he began to convulse and writhe like a fish out of water.
He would pay, would pay for all the pain he had inflicted on Draco. For the wounds, the agony, the desperation. He would pay for everything!
Griever realized he was dying ... and a last cry of desperate madness escaped his throat, before it too, was gulped down.
The aura of the Lord flared for a moment, and then went out like a candle being blown by the wind.
The monster went limp in his grip, no longer resisting.
Harry took a step back ... and the Dementor Lord began to turn ashen, sandy ... in the end he became an ash column that crumble into granules of dried meat and dead skin, peeling and rotting at unnatural speed. Until at Harry's feet, only bones and a putrid mass of dried residues were left.
Sanity was slowly returning to his mind, the murderous rage that had taken him, subsiding with the destruction of the one who brought it up.
Harry looked at the remains of the Lord Dementor, and although knowing he should be feeling something, guilt perhaps, for having killed him, the ex auror could not feel anything more than a certain justified satisfaction.
He shook his head and turned to the bed.
"Draco …" had missed him so much, so terribly much ... took the first step towards him ... and collapsed on the floor.
At first he felt it like a tiny cancerous flame carving a burrow inside him, but soon it started to grow and possess all of Harry.
As a small conqueror who brought with him strange and new sensations, small and new electrical connections that were forming a network all through his insides.
The pain was intense, agonising, filled with an acidic dark feeling that had a spicy aftertaste, perhaps it was hatred.
And then came the power. An energy flare swallowed Harry from the inside out, merging with him, his aura, his soul, his own magic. He felt like a bottle filled to overflowing.
He roared in wild pain. His bones, flesh, blood, were changing. Adapting to accommodate the new flow of magical energy.
But still it wasn't enough, it wouldn't fit.
He shouted again, convulsing. Unable to contain the supersaturation of power, afraid it would kill him.
His muscles creaked about to break...
Harry could no longer take it ...
The agony concentrated on his back, his spine and shoulder blades, felt something give out and skin tearing. Then, flesh burst open splattering all deep carmine blood as he writhed unable even to scream.
His entire back creaked, the pain was so intense ... Harry begged soundlessly for unconsciousness, but his body, energized, would not allow it.
He did not know how long did the process last. Crunches, screams, excruciating pain ...
Until he was finally exhausted, gasping for breath, feeling like a rag.
Pain left, but in its wake a strange weight on his back remained, yet, nothing else.
Potter tried to sit up, and although shaky, having to hold onto the wall, he succeeded.
Something was wrong… unbalancing him... he looked over his shoulder ...
"Wings?!" Giant appendages, black and lustrous, filled his view. Magnificent bat-like wings whose broken edges seemed eaten away, as if time and moths had eroded them. His new acquisition camouflaged with his robe, folded looked an extension of it. But extended...
He refused to think about it. As if he was not alien enough.
Harry shook his head and dismissed it on the spot. There was someone who he couldn't wait to wake up.
Draco seemed asleep. Strands of his smooth silver hair spread on the pillow. Long eyelashes touching dark circles around his eyes, like watercolor stains.
He was so thin ... looked so frail and exhausted ... A delicate figure that could shatter if touched. Harry sat on the edge of the bed, watching him, drinking in his features.
His heart seemed about to came out of his chest. Could not stop watching him, making sure he was really there.
"Draco. Draco? Wake up." He touched a fair strand of hair, brushing it of his temple gently, urging Draco to respond. But the little blonde did not move. There was not even a tremor of eyelashes.
"Draco. Open Eyes." Harry muttered, this time brushing his lips on a pale earlobe. But Draco was limp, still, caught in the clutches of sleep. "Draco?"
He shook the blonde slightly, feeling concern began to sink its sharp claws into his chest.
"Draco!" ... Nothing.
There was no answer.
Increasingly frantic, Harry put his ear to Draco's chest.
There was no pulse, there was no breathing.
"No …" He lifted the body from the mattress, cradling him in his arms. Tucking that thin limbs against his chest, wanting desperately for those grey eyes to open, for a response to his pleas. But the little body was cold and limp. There was no life there.
Draco was gone, he had arrived late.
"No …". Harry shrunk, wrapping around Draco's lifeless form with arms and legs, and wings, making a safe cocoon he did not want to leave.
"Forgive me, forgive me, Draco ... if I hadn't been so stupid, if I had listened to you ... all my fault ... I love you…. Love you." He muttered brokenly, again and again.
Bitter tears soaked his eyelashes while desperately kissing those icy, pale and breathless lips.
"Draco ... I love you."
To be continued.