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: Language

Chapter 14

"No! Don't!"

The shriek made Draco close his eyes for a few seconds. However, he gritted his teeth and continued his task, steadfastly ignoring Sophie's protests coming louder as she ran to him.

"Don't hurt it!" As was her wont, her voice had risen to piercing levels and it was almost physically painful to hear.

The last of his patience flew, and Draco's head snapped up, turning his glare to the girl. "We're out of food, Sophie! Do you want to starve?"

His voice was harsh, not only from frustration at her difficulty, but also from the weariness that had accompanied him like a parasite for the past year. The majority of the day had passed before Draco was finally successful at using the set of hunting knives found in the safe house to capture and kill one rabbit. He was cold, he was tired, his wound was once again acting up, and it had been two days since he last had something substantial to eat.

Sophie shrank back at his tone, but stubbornly tried to pull his arms away from the creature, paying no mind to the sharp knives in his hands.

"The hell is wrong with you," Draco muttered under his breath as he freed himself from her grasp. He wanted nothing more than to scream and smack the girl with the carcass on the ground, but he managed to control himself. He was the adult here. "You're going to eat whatever I give you, do you hear?" he affected a stern tone, trying to copy the behavior his father had shown that was so successful at garnering his own obedience.

Sophie glared at him, her small shoulders rigid and straight. She took a deep breath. "No!" she yelled before turning abruptly and running back the short distance to the shack, leaving him holding a dead rabbit alone in the growing darkness.

The next few minutes were spent both swearing and angrily skinning the rabbit, Draco's deft fingers, trained for years in cutting delicate potions ingredients, making quick work of revealing the meat and disposing the rabbit's innards. Meanwhile, the autumn wind swept about him, making him shiver and grit his teeth in pain.

It was already mid-October, and his wound was not closing. This should not be normal, but Draco guessed that Nagini's poison had probably interfered its healing somehow. Every day, he would change his bandages with the hope that it would get better, and every day, he was disappointed. In fact, as more time passed, his wound took on a more angry red, and Draco was more and more afraid to look at it.

Here he was, shivering and aggravating his wound, cutting up rabbit meat for a dinner that the muggle twit won't even eat. Draco cursed again, and doubled his efforts with the knife. It was no matter, really. He could make a stew and eat it himself, and the girl could starve herself to death. He would finally be free of her, free of the responsibility for another person's life, and it would be easier to feed just one stomach, anyways.

Finished, he threw the slices and chunks of rabbit meat into the small, oilskin sack at his side and stood, removing his bloody gloves as he did so. After one last glance around at the silent forest, taking in the vision of multi-colored leaves and a clear star-speckled sky, Draco stalked back into the shack.

Wishing that the stupid bed could make a satisfying bang when he pushed it up to the ceiling, Draco entered the safe house with a scowl on his face, noticing immediately that the muggle was nowhere to be seen. He pursed his lips, but chose not to bother with a search. The cat mewled a greeting from its position at the top of the shelf.

"You don't mind rabbit stew, do you?" Draco asked it, grouchily. When the cat didn't answer, Draco made for the kitchen, trying to not let the knowledge that he didn't even know how to make rabbit stew stop him.

O_O

Not every day with Sophie was difficult.

Most days were spent sitting at the squat desk, boy and girl squished next to each other, heads drawn together as they meticulously went over the letters of the alphabet, sounding them out and tracing them down on the parchment. The sound and smell of parchment and ink made Draco nostalgic for what he was currently missing from Hogwarts, and he didn't mind when Sophie took far too long to adjust her fingers with the quill.

When they were bored of lessons, Draco would teach Sophie the games on the shelf before they would play and disregard the rules completely. When he was brave enough, he took Sophie outside through the exit found in the kitchen, and they would spend the day in the forest, him discovering a myriad of plant life and animals that he wished he could bring back to his potions lab, and Sophie attempting to climb trees and chasing bugs.

On other days, Draco found himself with a short fuse, and he would snap at Sophie with little cause or warning. Her constant need for attention wore on his nerves, and sometimes, he purposely ditched her in the forest just for a few hours of peace.

Of course, reason would return, and he would frantically search for her among the thick trees, berating himself again and again that one could not simply leave a young child alone in a forest.

He wasn't perfect. Honestly, he was far from perfect. He had nowhere near enough patience to deal with a child, and he had nowhere near enough maturity nor goodness in him to be able to take care of Sophie as a responsible adult. However, he still tried to do right by her, and when she annoyed him, he would try to keep his temper. Yes, he would try, but more often than not, he failed.

He made her cry more times than he was willing to admit, but sometimes, he would attempt to make up for it later, with a blooming flower that belonged in the beginning of spring rather than the start of autumn or a drawing that Draco would create from his memories of the creatures he'd seen in Care of Magical Creatures.

It took a while, and it was a slow, halting progress, but Draco eventually realized that he needed Sophie just as much as she needed him. At some point in the deep fall of November, when Sophie could successfully recognize and write most of the alphabet and her triumphant smile caused a feeling of warmth to wash over him, Draco realized that he liked making the kid happy. He realized that when Sophie smiled or laughed, contentment would relieve his incessant pain and reduce the worry that was causing premature lines between his brows.

He needed her to keep himself sane, as she was the sole reason he could not trap himself within his own thoughts and mull over the whereabouts of his mother and the condition of his father. Although he stressed constantly about finding food, and although they went without a bite to eat multiple times during their stay in the safe house, he still fell asleep comfortably as long as he knew Sophie was in the other bed safe and was there to smile at him in the morning.

He wasn't alone. This was important. Sophie gave him a sense of purpose, and this kept him grounded. He hadn't invited the fog into his mind in a long time, and he found that he did not miss it. The numbness that the fog had brought was not healthy, he decided, and he told himself that he was needed outside his head, where he can take care of Sophie and make sure she lived.

Almost five months of the muggle sticking by his side, and Draco allowed himself to admit that he had grown fond of the child. If this made him a sap, he didn't care. He found himself more tolerant of her nearness, and annoyed with her only when she did something that could harm herself. He did nothing so sentimental like tuck her into bed and the like, but now, when she smiled at him, it was too easy for him to smile back.

O_O

A particularly strong wind buffeted into Draco's back, almost pushing him forward to smash his face into the leaf-strewn ground. Draco huffed and repositioned his knees so that he was more stable and less in danger of falling. Squinting his eyes in the near darkness, he worked to set up yet another trap in front of a rabbit trail that he'd recently discovered. Finding the rabbit hole was a small victory, but creating the trap was what Draco was afraid would be his downfall. After all, he had no experience with these things and only had a thin, outdated book from the safe house as guidance.

He worked clumsily with the copper wire and branches, and the contraption fell apart more than once. Missing his wand more than ever, Draco was tempted to mark this as a lost cause and settle for another few days of nothing but herbs and the few remaining potatoes to eat. However, his hands moved again to arrange the branches, and when the branches stayed put, he let out a long sigh of relief. He looped the wire into a noose and tied it around the middle branch.

After looking at his trap critically and deeming it close enough to the picture in the book, Draco stood up and his knees creaked in protest. Once again, the flame of his wound made itself known, but Draco determinedly ignored it. He looked around for the trunk that he'd marked earlier with his knife, and after finding it in the gloom, he started back in the direction that the arrow designated.

Draco had journeyed quite a distance from the safe house, a desperate measure he had taken during a particularly bad week of starvation, and he knew that it would be full dark by the time he made it back. He had told Sophie not to leave the safe house, and he trusted her by now to heed his word.

His pace was slow, but Draco's mood was light as he walked among the trees. It was nearing winter, and Draco knew he should worry about finding food during this dangerous season, but he couldn't find it in himself to think past the expectation that soon, he would have meat to put on the table.

Draco recalled the semi-full kitchen back in the summer – July, wasn't it? – and cursed the cat silently for about the hundredth time. If it weren't for its greedy, chaotic destruction of the majority of the safe house's stores, they would still be stocked with plenty of food. Instead, the cat had interrupted the preserving charms on most of the meats, leaving behind a rotting, useless mess that took forever for him to clear out.

It was nearing December now, judging from the magical calendar hanging on the safe house wall, and although they were both unhealthily thin, Draco was glad that they were still surviving. He was doing his best getting them food, and he would do whatever was necessary to get them both through the winter.

His wound sent another spike of pain through him, as if to remind him of its worsening condition, but Draco walked doggedly on, shallowly breathing to lessen the pain's effect on his pace.

Yes, his wound was getting worse, with its spreading redness and leaking yellowish liquid, but with nothing to treat it other than fresh bandages and some disinfecting cream that he suspected did nothing, Draco could do nothing about it. As a result, he tried to keep it from his mind and forced himself to think of other matters. He was thankful he could still walk, and he hoped that whatever was in Nagini's poison that was keeping him alive would continue to do so. He regretted that he had not asked Blaise more about the poison before his old friend departed.

He was still contemplating on how to prepare the extra meat when a shrill shriek interrupted the silence of the forest, causing Draco to stop dead in his tracks. Frozen, he held his breath to listen as a surge of adrenaline rushed through his body. It was difficult to hold still, but Draco fought the desire to scramble quickly back to the safe house and instead moved only his eyes to scan his surroundings. He wanted to cause as little a disturbance as possible, and any sudden movements would betray his position as quickly as he could blink.

Letting out his breath slowly when nothing jumped out of the shadows to attack him, Draco allowed the tenseness to drain from his shoulders. The sound was probably from some unfortunate prey, then.

After taking several deep breaths to steady himself, he once again moved forward, this time with his senses on high alert. It wouldn't do for the predator to turn its target on him next.

However, his hypothesis was dashed when several more screams and crashes sounded from somewhere nearby, and, with growing terror when he recognized that some screams formed coherent words, Draco realized that there were other people in the forest with him.

"Fuck," he whispered as he looked wildly about him, fear clouding his vision so that the trees all blended together into one confusing gray mass. The setting sun offered no light to see by, and he could no longer pick out the right direction back to the safe house in his panicked disorientation.

There.

Draco's eyes widened as he picked out multiple flashes of colors not too far from his position. The crackling of leaves as running footsteps bounded across the forest floor was clear to him now, and he knew that it was impossible for him to run away fast enough before the interlopers heard his own footsteps and overtook him.

More screams. More spells. More crashes.

A surge of inspiration struck him when he looked around one last time, and with hardly any thought to his wound, Draco took a running start, and jumped.

His fingers grabbed the lowest branch of a nearby tree, and he quickly pulled himself up. Before the ominous cracking of the branch could give way to a more serious breaking, he reached up again, climbing ever higher and upsetting more and more leaves as he continued. Quickly, ever more quickly, he pulled himself up, trying to put as much distance between him and the ground before the strangers happened too close to his position for him to move any longer.

He tasted blood in his mouth from biting his lips too hard, felt sweat trickle between his eyes and down his neck, and more daunting, he felt a tickle against his belly and feared that blood had soaked through his bandages and were now dripping down his skin.

Sharp stinging in his fingers told him that he was picking up splinters, but he didn't allow himself to falter. The shouts were getting louder, and Draco could discern several spells that were definitely not friendly.

Once he pulled himself onto a branch that appeared steady enough to hold his weight, he stopped, slumping wearily against the trunk. Cautiously holding onto the branch so that he wouldn't upset any leaves, he peered downwards and hoped that the strangers would simply run past him.

After a few more seconds worth of suspense, the explosion of disturbed bushes and breaking branches made Draco start, and he gulped as he tried to keep as still as possible. However, when his eyes picked out a familiar bushy head running past underneath his tree, his fear was temporarily replaced with surprise, because he recognized that head, and he recognized the voice that repetitively shouted out shield charms, and he could do nothing but blink at the realization that the person he was watching was none other than Hermione Granger.

"What?" Draco couldn't help but whisper when Harry Potter and Ron Weasley followed Granger's footsteps a few seconds later, the latter bellowing out blasting curses with barely a care at his target. Draco winced when the force of the spells shook his tree badly enough that he almost slipped. Hanging on desperately, he continued to look down and wasn't disappointed when a group of wizards thundered past below him.

This group was laughing and shouting out binding curses and hexes with ferocity. Draco had no idea who these people were, and he didn't intend to find out. His fingers still clutching tightly at the wood, he waited quietly for the entire procession to past him, absently thinking that there was no way his rabbit trap had survived the disturbance.

Once a few minutes had passed by in silence, Draco blinked, interrupting the daze that his stunned mind had fallen into.

Harry Potter. Here.

Draco shook his head disbelievingly. Out of all the forests in the world, Harry Potter was running in his. However, with a start, Draco recalled that the older Weasley had said something about the safe house being near their new headquarters, and this sudden recollection made him uneasy.

Had he really been nearby the Order of the Phoenix this entire time? Did they know he was utilizing one of their safe houses? Or more importantly, did they mind?

Draco bit his lip and looked down again. Seeing nothing but trampled grass and crushed leaves, he leaned back against the trunk, sighing out in relief. He had no idea when it would be safe for him to come down as he didn't fancy getting tangled into whatever Potter and his sidekicks had gotten themselves into, but he knew he had to get back to the safe house soon. If Sophie became impatient and left to go look for him, she could put herself in danger.

Unless the danger came to her.

Draco sat up straight, feeling as if his heart had jumped to his throat. Why else would the Gryffindors come this way? What if they planned to use the safe house? What if those idiots led that throng of wizards straight to her?

Without realizing it, he was wringing his hands as he stared fixedly at the ground. He did notice that his body felt drawn toward it, as if it wanted nothing more than to propel itself downward and toward the safe house as quickly as possible. His body felt the sense of urgency, practically vibrating from it, and the sharp bark of the tree bit harshly into his tense muscles.

It was a strange feeling, something he'd never experienced before, not even when unleashing the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, or even when meeting Voldemort for his punishment. In those times, fear had been the dominant presence, not this keenness for him to do something.

It was made even more strange when his mind screamed his reluctance louder than any howler could possibly manage. The stark contrast between mind and body was a disorientating thing, and it only served to further separate the rift between the two, chaining Draco ever more tightly to indecision.

He was safe here. He could simply wait, and more than likely, Potter and his friends would be killed or captured by those men. Then, they would leave his forest. Sophie was probably waiting for him patiently and far out of harm's way. Why should he risk his life climbing back down and making his way toward unknown wizards? Especially when he didn't even have a wand?

But then…

Draco closed his eyes tightly and took in a deep breath. After letting the air out slowly, allowing himself that much more time to change his mind, he severely shut off his thoughts and finally, succumbed to the actions that his body pushed him into.

Climbing back down the tree was far easier than climbing up, and he made quick work of introducing his feet to solid ground once again. Not giving himself even a second to catch his breath, Draco continued in the direction of the wizards' path of destruction, having no doubts that this was the correct way to the safe house.

The minutes passed by in a blur. All Draco could hear were his footsteps, crackling noisily on dead leaves, and he focused intensely on them. They were the sound of progress, the sound that reassured him that he was getting closer to Sophie. There was no reason to panic, and he wished that the dread that had taken root inside him would just kindly fuck off and stop distracting him.

He was so absorbed with placing one foot before the other that the sound of voices nearby gave him a violent start. Catching himself from falling, Draco held his breath and looked forward, easing himself behind a trunk as his eyes made out two figures hunched against a tree about ten yards away.

"- be able to get away with it," one of the figures was saying. The man was clearly nervous, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "I think it'll be smarter to just divide the galleons evenly among all of us."

His partner gifted him with a particularly hard blow to the head. "And get what? Two galleons? If you think the snakey bastard will play it fair, you're more of an idiot than I believed."

"I'm just saying that these men are probably stronger than us. We can't kill them. Maybe if we tell the Potter kid that we're on his side…"

"You think schoolchildren know how to kill?"

"Incapacitate them, whatever, you wanker. Them three and us two can get rid of the others, and then we turn Potter in and collect our money."

The other man snorted and shrugged. "Whatever you want, as long as I do get my money. We're already cheated from the money for busting their new headquarters, and if I don't get paid soon, I'll get kicked out of my flat."

"Then we should go find them."

Draco stared incredulously as the two men walked away from him, already understanding – for the most part, anyway – the current situation.

If these men answered to the "snakey bastard," Draco would no doubt have to avoid them. However, how would he avoid them if he didn't know where they were?

Draco uneasily looked around him, and biting his lip, he made his way forward as quietly as he could. Instead of walking with a one-track mind of reaching Sophie as soon as possible, he was now more cautious, taking pains to nudge leaves aside with the toe of his boots before placing his foot down on the forest floor. He hadn't had to move stealthily in months, and his muscles already strained from his efforts to not make a sound.

It was slow going, but he eventually arrived at a copse of familiar knobby, half-dead trees that he knew wasn't too far from the shack. Although relieved that he hadn't seen any signs of the strangers nor Potter and his friends so far, Draco worried that this meant they were closer to Sophie.

He continued forward, hand clenched around an imaginary wand and eyes flickering from shadow to shadow. Very much on alert, he heard the commotion ahead before he actually saw anything, and he took care to decrease their distance with not even a snap of a twig to announce his presence.

Hiding beneath a branch still stubbornly holding on to its leaves, Draco peered at the little clearing that currently hosted a group of men surrounding – Draco sighed inwardly – a ferociously spitting Ron Weasley. The lights from several lumos spells lit the area clearly and further darkened the shadows that hid Draco.

"They're not coming for me, you bloody pillocks! Just take me and go!" Weasley was shouting, straining violently against someone's incarcerous.

The group laughed uproariously, and Weasley's face turned an alarming shade of red. There were four in the group, Draco counted, but he noticed that none had the shapes of the two men he saw earlier. So there were at least six interlopers in his forest, then. Not counting the Golden Trio, of course.

"You ain't worth a hair on my bollocks, kid," a wizard jeered as he prodded Weasley with his shoe. "The real money is in the kid with the glasses and the stupid sodding scar, and we'll wait for him all night if we have to."

Draco tuned out the rest of the groups taunts and looked at the Weasley struggling on the ground with a strange mixture of pity and reluctance.

Why reluctance?

Draco had no fucking idea, and he didn't intend to linger to sort himself out.

Easing himself back out of the clearing, he decided to take a more roundabout way to the shack, hoping fervently that he would not run into anymore surprises on the way back.

But, of course, the universe held some sort of grudge against him, because not even five minutes later, he heard a whimpering sound above him. Draco froze and tilted his head, listening closely. A second later, he heard it again: a whimpering and harsh breathing.

Slowly, he looked up, bracing himself for what he might see, and was rewarded with the sight of Granger slumped precariously on a tree branch, not quite successful at hiding herself from view. Draco blinked up at her, wondering if she saw him, and wondering if he should make his presence known if she did not.

Not any of your damn business, Draco told himself firmly. He squinted at the huddled figure made distinguishable by that ridiculous hair, and he shook his head slowly. The sounds the girl was making hinted that she was hurt, but Draco shouldn't – couldn't – be bothered. There was someone else who needed him. Someone more defenseless and less annoying.

But he wavered, and the step he took toward Sophie was careless and smashed several leaves as his foot made contact with the ground. Immediately, the whimpering cut off, and Draco gritted his teeth.

Draco heard the sharp intake of breath, and he heard Granger shift on the branch as if to get a clearer look. He swallowed and was about to move forward when his whispered name made him freeze once again.

"Malfoy? That's you, isn't it?"

Her whisper cut through the air as loudly as a rush of wind, making him cringe. He debated whether he should run, but for some reason, his feet made his decision for him by staying rooted to the spot.

"You're not with them, are you?" Granger asked, her shaking breath interrupting her question several times.

Draco didn't know why he did it, but he shook his head. He really should get going. He needed to check on Sophie.

"Malfoy…" her pained breathing was too loud. "My wand…I dropped it while I was climbing. Can you throw it up to me?"

Draco automatically looked down. His eyes swept the grass, but it was difficult to see anything in the darkness.

But a wand…he could find it. He could keep it. He could use magic again.

The desire washed through his body with an intensity he hadn't felt in a long time. He could do magic again!

Draco began his search with vigor, straining his eyes to pick out the wand among the grass and leaves.

"Never thought," Granger's whisper floated down to him. He heard her laugh quietly. "Never thought I'd see you here, of all places. Ron told us what you did."

Draco paused at that, but continued his search with pursed lips. He wished the mudblood would shut up.

"It should be right below me," Granger pointed out helpfully, and right when she said that, Draco found it.

His hand grasped the polished wood like a parched man grabbed for water, and it took considerable effort to contain the happiness bubbling inside. The time for celebration was later, however, as he knew he had to get away from here as fast as he could. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of looking up, and his gaze connected with Granger's as she looked down at him.

The look in her eyes – hopeful, grateful – stopped him from immediately taking off. Draco struggled with himself for a few seconds, and finally opened his mouth to tell her – when a bright light coming from his left got his attention.

He noticed it too late, and the spell hit him in his middle and spread quickly all over his body, petrifying him so that he could do nothing but blink. The Body-Bind Curse. A dozen strings of expletives burst in Draco's mind.

"Hermione," a new voice entered the vicinity and Draco had no trouble guessing who the voice belonged to. "Hermione, you okay?"

Draco turned his eyeballs to the left and caught the eyes of the boy wonder and Wizarding world's only hope, Harry Potter himself.