Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter. I do not own Harry Potter. I do not own the plot, characters, spell names, places, etc. mentioned in the Harry Potter books and movies. I am writing for fun and not for profit.
Summary: Set after HBP. After months of enduring cruel games at the hand of Death Eaters as punishment for his failure, Draco manages to escape. Seriously injured, wandless, and accompanied by a 4-yr-old muggle girl, he struggles to survive. Will he be able to help put an end to the war, or will he suffer a fate worse than death?
Warnings: None
Chapter 12
It only took one glance around the interior to pretty much see all there was to see. A small cot dominated the tiny space, with a messy pile of blankets clumped together where normally a pillow would lie. Pushed against a dusty corner was a questionable table of a size clearly meant for a single person, as well as a rickety chair that looked as if it would collapse if anyone dared to sit upon it. Other than those items, the shack was empty. A visible layer of dust coated the wooden floor, and when the pair stepped further inside, the dust flew up like puffs of clouds into the air.
"This is our new home?"
Despite the worrying reddish haze obscuring the outer edges of his vision, Draco was amused at the obvious disgusted tone in her voice. He glanced down at the muggle, who looked back up at him with a scandalized expression on her face. Her lips contorted into a pout. "I miss my home." She looked down to the floor. "I want Mum," she murmured.
Thinking back to the fact that he had only just escaped from his own home, he couldn't share her sentiment. However, looking around one more time with as neutral an expression as he could manage on his face, he couldn't really blame the girl.
The shack was small, almost comically small. Draco's brow wrinkled as he contemplated the single cot in the room. It made no sense. The Order wouldn't give even one Weasley such a repulsive hovel as a safe house, let alone an entire pack of them. The family was important to Potter; surely the Order would respect them enough to offer a descent place?
Sophie inched her way toward the chair, gazing wide-eyed at the sheer dullness of the place and sneezing several times as the dust settled around her shoulders. Draco eyed the bed warily, idly wondering if it were infested with disgusting insects. A wave of lightheadedness took his reluctance away a moment later, and he sat gratefully on the edge of the mattress, grimacing slightly from both pain and the bed's hardness. He frowned. This thing really didn't deserve to be termed "bed," really. More like…a bloody rock.
But it was something, and he was tired. He couldn't complain now. He was safely away from the manor and away from Voldemort and away from the war. No more meaningless games and torture. Of course, nothing was perfect, but for now, Draco was glad to simply be alive.
He frowned again. Staying alive involved several unforgiving, quite crucial necessities, one of which demands the daily consumption of food. And water. Swearing a little under his breath and defying years of strict lessons, Draco slouched with his face in hands and elbows on knees, because fuck it, his mother wasn't here to scold him.
Food. He really couldn't help but feel a little self pity. He'd never had need to worry about his next meal before, whether they were brought to him in abundance at Hogwarts or on a pathetic tin plate in a cell, he could depend on filling his stomach at some point in the day. Now, he was verging on two days of nothing but water to fill him. Moreover, it was not only him he needed to worry about now.
Draco peeked through his fingers to gaze at the little girl across the small space, only to find her staring right back at him. She smiled brightly when their eyes connected and swung her feet more enthusiastically. He eyed the wobbling chair uncertainly, but before he could tell her to stop lest she broke it, Sophie spoke.
"When will we go look for Mum?" she asked. Her face was expectant, but she nodded understandably, like a mature adult. "You don't feel good, so it can't be today. How about tomo—" Her words cut off suddenly as something caught her interest. "Kitty!" she exclaimed loudly, causing Draco to blink.
"Pardon?" he asked, but the girl was no longer looking at him. She hopped quickly off the chair, sending it scampering a few inches backward and colliding almost fatally with the table. Giving no heed to the filth, she plopped belly-down on the dusty floor, and squinted fiercely into the shadows underneath the bed.
"What the fu—" His words were cut off when Sophie reached an arm out and a rather distressed yowl sounded from directly beneath him. Startled, Draco jumped up off the bed, nearly stepping on Sophie in the process, and swore loudly when once again, his wound flared angrily, sending white hot agony throughout his body.
The little girl stared at him wide-eyed, saying, "Oooooh, bad word," before her attention was once again stolen by the thing under the bed.
Draco, gasping quite heavily, watched her struggling for a few moments until he realized he should probably do something to help the kid out. He surveyed the filthy ground and immediately decided he would not imitate the muggle. Instead, he went to the end of the bed, and while he didn't expect much, attempted to lift it.
To his surprise, and Sophie's too, judging by her yelp, the bed came up with no resistance, and floated almost gracefully the rest of the way to the cobwebbed ceiling. When it hit the top of the shack, it repelled slightly but bobbed right back up until it rested unmoving in the air.
Draco wasted a few seconds staring dumbly at the bed's underbelly, his shocked mind at a blank. When Sophie let out a delighted scream loud enough to wake the devil itself, Draco glanced down to the sight of the kid hugging – squeezing, really – a silver tabby cat.
Now, Draco found himself staring at a different oddity, and his poor undernourished mind struggled to understand the situation. While the color of the cat reminded him of McGonagall, he was one hundred percent sure that this cat was not her. Why? Because the cat was fat. Really fat. It wasn't a charming fat, either. In fact, it could be considered morbidly obese. Sophie was having trouble carrying the thing, and most of the cat still touched the floor, though it could not be comfortable stretched to its limits with tiny human arms squeezing underneath its front legs.
Uneasily, Draco watched the cat's belly bulge slightly from Sophie's tight grip. "Drop it, kid. You might…pop it."
Sophie's only answer was to laugh wildly, jumping up and down and around the tiny space, dragging the pathetic animal with her and once again disturbing the dust on the wooden floor. The cat was certainly not amused at being manhandled and yowled disconsolately. Its eyes snapped to Draco and it stared at him with pupils abnormally large in the dim light, as if silently asking for assistance.
"Hey kid, calm down."
His half-hearted attempt was thoroughly ignored, and Draco swore he saw a little reproach in those inky eyes. He looked away, glancing up at the floating bed disbelievingly one last time before looking at the floor, and what he saw made him lose interest in Sophie's antics and the fat cat real quick.
There, camouflaged with the wooden floor, was a small indent. Usually, he wouldn't notice such things; however, judging from the clear paw prints circling the indent, Draco knew that this was what held the cat's interest before being rudely interrupted by the muggle girl. Upon closer inspection, he could make out a faint square outline in the wood, expertly arranged so that it seemed to match the woods' natural grooves from a few steps back. Grimacing, Draco dropped to his knees and reached a hand out to the indent. His fingers curled naturally into it, and once he had a firm grip, he pulled up. Nothing happened. It was stuck. Frowning, Draco then decided to push down.
It was a good thing he didn't apply too much force, otherwise he might've toppled face-first into the depths that the wooden trapdoor had just revealed.
Draco glanced up, exchanging glances with Sophie, who was now standing stock still, eyes riveted to Draco's discovery, and the cat, who seemed to be glaring at him.
"Is this where you've been getting your food?" He asked it. "Am I about to find the reason to your weight problem?"
Of course, the cat didn't answer. It stared at him sullenly, as if it understood its territory was about to be usurped. Sophie giggled, apparently amused that he was talking to a cat.
Reaching a hand into the shadows, Draco could feel a horizontal wooden pole, which he assumed to be a rung of a ladder. He grabbed it and pushed down on it as hard as he could, and when he was certain the ladder wasn't going to collapse on him, he secured Pansy's bag high up on his shoulder and maneuvered his body with great difficulty until his feet were safely standing on a rung.
Ignoring the pain, he made his way steadily underground, breathing in the stale, but dust-free air beneath the shack. Halfway down the ladder, once his head cleared the dusty wooden floor, the trapdoor closed itself on top of him. Forcing his feet further down jolted his wound again and again, and beads of sweat formed on his brow at the exertion. It was not a pleasant experience, but thankfully, it was a short one. Draco found himself touching ground and without warning, lights abruptly flared all around him, startling Draco so much that he let out an uncharacteristic, high-pitched yelp and dropped the bag to the floor.
Once he reassured himself that the world had not exploded on him, he blinked rapidly, his eyes still not accommodating to the sudden brightness. When it was no longer too painful to keep his eyes open, Draco looked around, and as he did, a great feeling of relief dissipated the self-pity he had felt above.
The room beneath the shack resembled a fairly well-equipped bunker. The ladder led to a small lounge, occupied by several mismatched furniture. Five small doors were embedded into the stone walls, currently wide open. Peering cautiously inside each room, Draco discovered two reasonably sized bedrooms, each complete with two naked cots and wooden dressers. Two other doors revealed basic bathrooms, nearly Spartan in their style. The last door led to a combined kitchen and dining area, and it was clearly in this room in which the cat spent most of its time.
Fighting off the weariness that had set into what felt like every single one of his bones, Draco dragged his feet into the kitchen's entrance, leaning heavily against the doorframe. It looked as if a tiny whirlwind had swept across the room. Half-eaten pieces of chicken were abandoned at random places on the floor. Scattered all along the countertops and table were an assortment of baked goods, which were apparently of no interest to this cat. Generous piles of fish bones littered the area, as well as an overturned barrel of what Draco deduced to be pumpkin juice. The entire place smelled of the sweet liquid, successfully drowning the surely unpleasant odor of the rotting meat and bones accumulated in this room.
Draco shuddered involuntarily at the mess, shocked at how such a small (relative to him, at least) creature could create such destruction. Although there seemed to be a few untouched barrels and high cabinets that surely cats cannot open, the amount of wasted food was almost staggering. Judging from the carnage, the cat had had plenty to eat. With no need for hunting, the cat had grown fat with complacency and spent most of the day gorging itself. Idly, Draco wondered how that cat had gone back to the surface. Surely not back up the ladder. How did the cat get back up there?
Oh. That muggle was still up there.
Draco turned around, too exhausted to look at the mess any longer, and faced the ladder in the corner of the lounge. Cursing Voldemort – quietly, in case the wizard was able to read his mind through the Dark Mark – and the world in general for his condition, Draco made his slow way toward the ladder again, and looked up.
No handle, no grooves. Nothing. A steel tongue placed at the edge of the trapdoor prevented it from going up, only allowing it to collapse downward. Clearly, this trapdoor served only as an entrance into this hideout. Judging from the smoothed out edges that blended perfectly with the ceiling, it was impossible to try and pry it open from below.
It took awhile for Draco to process this information. His mind was failing him, trying to shut him down to get some rest. He turned back to the room at large, eyes sweeping to find the exit, for of course, there must be one. That cat appeared above somehow.
At that point, the trapdoor above flipped inward, allowing the fat cat to plummet toward the ground. Being a cat, it landed easily on its four paws, though it made a quite a thump. A moment later, Sophie's small form latched onto the ladder. She managed to go down a couple rungs before her body froze.
"I'm stuck!" the girl exclaimed, her voice the saddest Draco had heard since he first met her.
Draco frowned. "What do you mean, you're stuck? Just climb down."
The girl was not really stuck. Not by any physical force, at least. Actually, she had looked down, and deemed the height was too much. Her limbs had locked and refused to move because she believed with all her being that moving meant falling. "I'll fall!" Sophie wailed, squeezing her eyes shut.
Draco scowled, reached up, and easily plucked the girl from the fifteen-foot ladder. He almost dropped her, but she managed to rotate and exchanged her grip from the ladder onto his shoulders.
With a grunt, he placed the muggle onto the ground, and rested against the ladder for a few seconds. Lifting a little thirty pound girl was too much for him in his state. Blinking away the red haze, which had grown more urgent in the past few minutes, Draco mumbled to Sophie that he needed to sleep.
Not caring to see if she understood him, he stepped groggily over the cat, who had deemed the spot he landed on was as good a place as any for a nap, and over to a long cloth-covered couch. He couldn't find to the energy to make it into one of the bedrooms.
Safe house, Draco thought. Should be safe here. That's the definition of safe house. It's the definition, so it must be true. It's safe here. Safe enough to sleep.
Usually, if his thoughts rambled like that, Draco caught himself. However, he was too far gone now to care. The pain was wearing down his body up to the point where he could no longer ignore it. He needed rest and time for his body to heal the aberration on his torso.
Just after he collapsed on the couch, during a split-second moment of lucidity, he gazed at Sophie and pointed vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. "Food…somewhere in there." Then, his eyelids collapsed and Draco slept.
Sophie nodded her head rapidly as if Draco were still looking at her. But first, she picked up a quilt that was folded on the arm of a loveseat and shook it out. There could be bugs hiding, her mother had said once during a stay at a bed and breakfast inn. She draped the blanket over the blond boy's form, tucking in the edges like her mother did for her.
"No bugs for you," whispered to girl. When Draco was wrapped up nice and comfortable, Sophie turned to the cat. She smiled brightly at the silver tabby, walking over to where it laid on its side. "C'mon kitty, let's go make dinner for my angel." She grabbed the cat's two front paws and proceeded to drag the animal toward the door that Draco had pointed at. "I dunno know what angels eat, but we can see what there is, first."
Sophie glanced at her sleeping guardian angel and smiled. Just like the picture in the book. Pale skin, and bright golden, almost white hair. Beautiful beings, Mum had said. Mum told her everyone had one, a guardian angel, but no one had ever met theirs. But she did. He saved her, but he got hurt because of her. Don't worry, though, because she'll take care of him. She wasn't going to let him out of her sight ever.
Wait till I tell her, Sophie thought. I'm taking care of my guardian angel. I'm the guardian angel this time. Mum will be happy.
Down on the floor, powerless against the determined girl, the cat let out a depressed mewl. Its world had just been turned upside-down in less than ten minutes, and it was not pleased.