Chapter 2: Man in the Storm

Draco tutted as he looked into his bathroom cabinet. He was nearly out of contact lens solution. He would need to go into town and he hated going into town. The muggle villagers didn't trust him and he didn't trust them, but he was running out of eggs and milk too, so he decided to make a quick run.

He looked around his small, window-less cottage for his eyeglasses and keys. He had sealed the window openings with bricks when he first moved in so that the only entrance was the front door. The fear of the outside world overpowered any worry of being trapped inside.

Despite the lack of sunlight, the interior was homely, lit warmly by the golden glow of his muggle lamps. A wooden table with only one chair took the center of the room near the fireplace he never used. He used electric wall heaters for both rooms. The small kitchen to the left of the front door was kept neat and clean, well-used pots and pans hanging from a rack above the counter next to the stove. A small couch stood against the wall across from his kitchen, in front of it a coffee table strewn with books. To the right were two plank doors, one leading to the bathroom, the other to his bedroom.

He steered away from cool colors, preferring earthy tones: reds, browns, and beige. Never any green. He wanted desperately the sense of warmth and safety, something he hadn't really had since the summer after Fifth Year. And he wanted to be left alone for the rest of his life. He was safe alone.

Despite his brown contact lenses and his dyed black hair and eyebrows, Draco still used a glamour charm when he went into town. It softened the edges around his angular jawline and sharp nose. He put on a black beanie, his fake eyeglasses, his fur-lined white coat, then grabbed his keys and the Glock, and started his half-hour trip into town in his Subaru Outback.

Roughly ten minutes into the drive he stopped the car after hearing the weather report on the radio. Glancing behind him, he saw the ominous storm cloud. If he continued he'd get stuck in the storm long before he reached town. If he turned back, he might make it home before the storm hit.

"Unbelievable," muttered Draco, and turned the car around.

It was a windy day and it wasn't long before the snow started to pick up and thinly blanket his visibility. He would have to drive nearly blind. Thankfully, the road home never had much traffic and Draco believed he was the only idiot driving out that day. He was beginning to rethink his stubborn refusal to purchase a muggle telly – for the weather reports if nothing else. He already lived so similarly to one, it rankled him to think he might need to fully integrate himself in their world now that he hid from his own.

And this snowstorm was going to be a particularly nasty one. Draco turned on his headlights at max and leaned forward in his seat, his knuckles white on the wheel. He was driving slow so it would take a while to reach home and he felt the first stirrings of a panic attack.

Not now, not now, please, not now, he told himself. Keep it together, Draco, one breath at a time.

The road soon became hard to see. It was bad enough it was in the middle of an expanse of snowy fields stretching for miles that would bloom with flowers in the spring. Even then it was narrow, it's curves hidden under the flower fields. It was his diligent focus on any signs of a road that helped him notice a black lump crumpled in the snow, several meters to his right. It took a moment to realize it was a body.

If he left the road he might not be able to spot the road again but he couldn't just leave a person lying there. He cried in exasperation, hating his own cowardice which had brought him so much grief in his past. This was his chance to redeem himself even a little. A chance to not hate himself so much.

Coming to a decision he stopped his SUV and got out. He opened the trunk where he had his hiking and foraging gear, then grabbed a rope and tied one end around one of the door handles and the other end around his waist. Then he pulled up his hood and zipped his coat up to his nose and started to trek across the snow towards the body.

The swirling snow made gauging the distance difficult but luckily the person wasn't far off. Draco crouched next to them and turned them around – then fell back crying in alarm. Fenrir Greyback! It was suddenly difficult to breathe and the sight of the werewolf stirred old, painful memories that threaten to overwhelm him.

Draco fumbled for his gun and pointed it with a quivering hand at Greyback. No one would know. Except he couldn't bring himself to do it, not even to one that had done him so much evil. However, as he goggled fearfully at the werewolf's bearded, weathered face, dusted in snow, it started to bubble and rearrange itself. A few seconds later, it was not Greyback but Harry Potter that lay before him.

The utter shock at what he discovered seemed to put a stopper on his panic. Harry Potter, polyjuiced as Fenrir Greyback, on death's door in the middle of nowhere. Draco would have feared that the Auror had tracked him down if it wasn't for that fact that there was no reason to polyjuice himself to do so. For one thing.

Draco wasted no time. Locking his Glock and shoving it into his coat pocket, he grabbed Potter under the arms and dragged him back to his car. It took a while to get the heavy bastard onto the back seats. Potter was bigger than he remembered. Clearly, he lifted weights and ate well as he was all hard muscle underneath his windbreaker.

After he got back in the driver's seat, he looked out the windshield and groaned in dismay. The storm was getting worse. As he drove, Draco trembled, scared and confused. Past horrors resurfaced in his thoughts. A half-dead Harry Potter so close to home, clearly not dressed for an Alpine winter, couldn't mean anything good for Draco.

It took another fifteen minutes to get home. The bottom of the door was covered in inches of snow. He unlocked it, dug some of the snow, pulled it open half way and hurried back to his car. Once again, he dragged Potter out of the SUV and across the snow with some difficulty, and finally got them both inside the warmth and safety of his cottage.

He stripped Potter and dragged him close to the fireplace. He hated fire but Potter was chilled to the bone and he needed to raise his body temperature soon. Grouchily, he mumbled, "Your idiotic tendency to sport with death never ceases to amaze, Potter. What are you doing here?"

First, he took some wood by the fireplace (he kept it just in case the heaters broke during an emergency) and, keeping far away as he could, lit a fire reluctantly with his rarely used makeshift wand. Draco checked Potter to see if he had any frostbite. When he determined the fool was in no danger and must have collapsed from both the cold and exhaustion, he covered him in blankets and went to make some soup.

As the food simmered in the pot, Draco went over to Potter's discarded clothes. He picked them up and as he lifted the wind-breaker a flask fell out of its pocket. When he bent over to pick up the flask, a note fell out as well.

"What is he up to," he asked as he inspected the items, sniffing the content in the flask. It contained some cheap, amateur concoction that passed as polyjuice potion. The note had some numbers and it took Draco a moment to realize it was Death Eater code with the location of the town.

"Shit," he whispered shakily and glanced at Potter's sleeping form, cocooned in thick woolen blankets on his couch.