"Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world." - Joel A. Barker

Chapter Nine: Reception Fades

Anything was better than this - making a pastime of balancing droplets of blood on his arm as they rose to the surface of his skin; watching wet red lines form and thicken. He just wanted to wrap his arm in something pretty and drench every happy feeling in existence.

He wanted to watch the world in flames, watch as it infested itself with sadness and collapsed with pain.

These were not strange feelings. He didn't know anything better, anything lighter than this, and wondered if there could possibly be others like him. He wanted to find them. He wanted to look at them and them to look at him and there to be an infinite understanding, satisfying beyond any revenge he could possibly deal to whoever could possibly be to blame.

At first he could feel nothing but the tar, when the knife felt like a small scratch... and then the wetness as he made red plaid patterns on a towel... but then the stinging would start. And the lump in his throat would dissipate then.

The tears, of course, remained, as they often did. He decided that as real as pain felt, it wasn't anything tangible. It was not matter. Matter could not be created or destroyed; it had to come from somewhere and it had to go somewhere as well. The causes and effects were as real as the knife next to him.

Draco remembered the first time his father showed any indication that he knew about Draco's self-harm. He had found one of his bloody towels, which Draco kept for some unknown reason, even to him. He folded them all neatly into little squares and stacked them in his luxurious walk-in closet, right under his 800 galleon dress robes.

Lucius had asked him what they were; Draco had replied, "remnants of torture victims."

He still wondered at that response, but even more, at his father's reaction to it - he had stood there for a few more seconds, just staring at him. Draco had stared back, unabashed, wondering if Lucius could see his lie, and even more, if Lucius even cared. They probably understood each other more in that moment than in any they had ever shared.

Good - some honesty probably did Lucius good, whether he thought Draco was a sick trophy stasher or a cutter.

The spells on his arms were fading. He could see the thin scars, brown, white, pink, running up and down his arms. Thank goodness Hermione Granger was as blind as she was. If only she knew his past handiwork... she would lecture him until his ears dropped off.

If there was anything he required her silence on, it was things like this.

Draco rubbed his arm, his skin bristling as the little hairs moved in their pores. There was a light wind about, and the open sea was rather calm for such an overcast sky. It was almost white.

He was thrust back into his memories, his brain supplying pictures of his father on a day like this.

Lucius always looked good in gloom. Something about his skin giving off a white glow, his normally pale eyelashes supplied with shadows and valleys that allowed for definition.

The world was grey on days like this, and London was as rainy as it ever was. The only color he could see was the red of his mother's lips and the blue of his parent's eyes, like the parting of the clouds, set in crystals.

He'd always wondered how something so pure looking could be so utterly sinister.

He had not inherited that - he was as colorless on a grey day as the surrounding stone slabs of people walking by. His eyes were like stone; dull, and more green when compared with his father's. It made him feel dead inside.

He shook his head. This journey was definitely supplying him with too much time to think, and the last thing he wanted to do was think about the past. As far as he was concerned, he was done telling himself that his life was over. He had at least a hundred years ahead of him... at least, he hoped that he did.

He didn't want Dumbledore's ill-placed faith to go to such waste. It felt like a kick to the ribs.

"What're you spacing about there?" asked Frank, coming up a nearby set of steps that led below. "I've seen better days than this, so I know you aren't enjoying the weather."

Draco shook his head. They'd been going for two days but Draco was still somewhat uncomfortable around Frank. Frank's happy-go-lucky attitude and odd sense of humor made him one of the strangest people that Draco had ever met. He couldn't understand that kind of an approach to life; his life consisted of constantly picking the lesser of two evils.

"There isn't much to do on deck... I've got hands for that sort of thing. I do love the open water though."

Draco nodded, not wanting to be impolite. It almost seemed that Frank was nearly a different species from him. "What do you do for a living?" he asked suddenly.

"If I told ya, I'd have to kill you later, wouldn't I?" When he got no response, he said, "Well, perhaps with my jokes. I ship cargo... well, I sneakily ship cargo around. There's never a lot of it, maybe a few bits here and there... but it's rather important to a special group of people."

One of the things Draco had noticed that was perhaps adding to his anxiety about the water was the fact that he sensed a magical presence that was not his or his charge's. He suspected that there was something afoot, and he had received confirmation.

"With whom do you do business?"

"I don't know if I can answer that," Frank said. "I trust everybody enough, but who knows, these days..."

"I'm not... a rival trader's spy or something, and I don't work for your government. I'm just curious as to why you took us in." Tim called from below then.

"You needed the help," he said, giving Draco a significant look. Draco studied the man's face, the face of the inferior being with the crinkly, smiling eyes and the unshaven face. "Lemme know if you need anything else," he said as he made his way back into the cabin. Draco stared back at the water.

"I need your assistance," Hermione said tentatively from the other side of the boat after Frank had gone.

"With what?" Draco asked halfheartedly, leaning on the railing.

"I... I need the hydrogen peroxide."

His eyes came to life. "SHIT!" he burst out, whipping around to face her. There was a contrite note in his voice; he'd completely forgotten about the muggle potion! He went to get the black duffel and rustled around in it.

Hermione bowed her head and removed her sunglasses. She had been mentally preparing herself for this - not only the stinging, but the fact that she could not handle a full bottle of watery hydrogen peroxide without her sight; she needed him to do it.

He looked at the bottle; it was plastic and brown, very strange looking compared to the beautiful glassware that wizard potions were kept in. Draco moved his thumb over the soft plastic as he walked over to her.

Oh. Oh.

Hermione was leaning back on her hands, her long torso stretched out above the glossy white of the bench. Draco stopped.

He had to pour the stuff on her himself.

"It's very runny, and cold. Don't get it in your hangnails unless you mean to, because it... it stings and bubbles when it comes in contact with the wound."

She made it sound terrible. Draco shook his head, sitting next to her cautiously and twisting the white cap off. Being this close to her immediately felt inappropriate. "What does this do again? Does it mend the skin?"

"No," Hermione breathed quietly. "It disinfects only."

Draco shook his head, steadying his breathing, and commanded, "Lie down."

She followed his direction nervously, her hair framing her head and tumbling over the bench.

He carefully filled the white cap with some of the clear fluid; it had a blue tinge to it and a smell that stung his nose. Hermione pulled her shirt up on her own, wary of accidentally showing her nipples and careful to avoid touching the sticky holes. She already knew that the fabric had left some lint stuck to them.

He studied her for a moment; her skin reflected the white of the sky blindingly, though her edges were grey. The panacea sap had apparently transformed into working tissue, filling the space left by the angry shards of wood. There was still a bit left, and if he concentrated, he could actually see it moving, solidifying into muscle, sinew, and flesh.

He looked up at her face as he balanced the capful above a small wound. Her lips were red, as were her cheeks.

He splashed the liquid onto a wound, and the flesh immediately began to sizzle and bubble. Hermione stifled a cry of pain; Draco had to look away.

She was chuckling now; he stared at her incredulously. Had she gone mad as well? She continued to chortle, even after it made her cough. "I'd forgotten what our medical remedies felt like!"

"That's not at all funny. Damn muggle shit." The smell was making him sick; he could feel the smell in his mouth, trying to fill his empty stomach.

She shook her head, tears in her black eyes, though she was smiling.

"Damn, you're strange," he muttered as he poured another capful and emptied it on her biggest wound - about the size of a golden snitch. It hissed and bubbled, and her thin muscles tensed as she bit through the pain. The stuff seemed downright foul, going against every magical cell in his body, everything. Remedies were supposed to make one feel good - she wasn't growing a spine or anything like that.

He took the remnant of her old, bloody shirt, wet it, and wiped at her skin gingerly. The wounds looked awful - wet and slimy, and even a little gritty. He picked a few obvious bits of dirt out of them with his fingers, stifling a gag.

When he'd finished, he capped the brown bottle quickly and took up the bandages - big white patches. Her lesions were still bubbling, and were juiced with clear slime. "Ugh," he said as he ripped the backing off one bandage and put it on, smoothing the edges and patting the center lightly. The juicy wound bled through the white, staining it amber.

She could feel his disgust more than she could hear it, and somehow it irritated her. "Yeah, yeah, I know I'm gross. You'll have your pretty pureblood fingers back soon."

He was beyond his comfort zone, afraid to touch her wounds too much, regardless of not being above the strange muggle method. Of all the things he'd touched, from blast-ended skrewts to frog eyes, this was the grossest. And he'd had his fair share of gross - Weaslette's bat-boogey hex was not to be trifled with.

And what was worse, he could feel his own cheeks redden as he touched her. He could feel her breasts move, and visually see the curve, see the smoothness of the skin around the holes. He suddenly wished very desperately for the cover of darkness.

"That," he said heavily when he finished, "was the worst. Ever. Never ask me to do something like that again."

"I..." Hermione started, but trailed off.

He heard the unfinished sentence in her pause anyway. She could have shouted it in his ear for the deafening silence it caused.

"That stuff is making me... sick," he said quietly. He needed to get away from her, away from her pulled up shirt that she had forgotten about, away from her smelly muggle chemical, her awkward silence. Her smooth skin and red lips.

Loss rushed over her as his footsteps faded and stopped on the other side of the boat. She gulped in some air and fumbled with the edge of her shirt.

"What's wrong with that?"

Hermione shook her head. "I'm usually smarter than this," she whispered back.

Tim nodded, quietly turning his head on his flat pillow. "How bad is it, do you think?"

"It... it could be bad. I don't even... I can't even identify it. But I know the general feeling is how it starts. How all of that drama starts."

"And are you so... opposed to feeling this way?"

Now how was she going to answer that? Leave it to a stranger to assess her situation so well. She didn't even know what she was dealing with here. "I'm not supposed to. I'm supposed to hate him, want nothing to do with him. Now I feel like he's ripped me away, and I have to claw my way back."

It was Tim's turn to shake his head.

So that companionship she'd felt was probably not the same as it was with her friends... because her relationship with her friends was not the same. That's the way it seemed.

And then she had asked, why? Why was it so different? She didn't hate Draco exactly - he definitely had a knack for pissing her off, but that's all it was at this point. She'd gotten used to him. So then why was she feeling like this? She couldn't get him out of the corner of her thoughts now. That emotion she'd felt as he'd walked away, like he was pulling something away from her, dragging her lungs on a chain behind him...

"I think you're thinking too much about it. Does that make sense?"

Hermione nodded slowly. "I have reason to be afraid." Thank goodness Tim couldn't see her eyes in the darkness, or anyone else for that matter; besides their utter blackness, he'd be able to see her doubt. He shared a room with half of the crew, which is where she and Draco were sleeping as well. Draco sat slumped against a wall near the door, his cot untouched.

"Why?"

She shrugged, causing her blanket to slide a bit. "I've got someone... back in London. And this was how that started, seven years ago."

"Seven years ago... that puts you at early teens, I suppose. This will be different. You've gotten older now."

"I don't want it to be anything."

Time sighed and turned over. "Sometimes fighting something makes it stronger. Besides, don't overthink it. Whatever will be, will be."

"Thanks, Tim."

On the other side of the room, Draco Malfoy rubbed his arm, wondering what Hermione was whispering about.

Author's note: I've got fanart for the story now! Visit my profile page for the link.