Chapter 5 - Draco

The creak of the cellar door's hinges grated on my nerves, and I resisted the urge to cringe. If this were any other room in the Manor, the elves would soon be profoundly regretting their carelessness and lack of upkeep. The cellar, however, served a different purpose than the rest of the Manor. It felt proper that its residents be clearly reminded of the fact that they could not choose to leave.

The smell of the place hit me like a fist to the nose; it was foul. The three prisoners had been here for varying lengths of time - the girl only arriving the previous night - but certainly, all of them had been here long enough to add to the smell. It seemed to be wafting from one particular corner - they may all be scum, but even animals have the sense to separate themselves from their refuse, it seemed.

The old man seemed to be slumped in a pile, covered in the tattered remains of his cloak. So he could not provide the Dark Lord with any useful information, but he could sleep, apparently. How delightful for him. The boy was asleep, too, or at least pretending to be. I doubted that any but the old and deaf could sleep through the cacophony of those ancient hinges. Either way, the boy - Thomas - did not stir. The girl, though, sat up and stared at me expectantly. Her gaze held no hostility, just curiosity and a hint of anticipation. Her long hair was matted and tangled beyond redemption; dirt smudged her face and arms. Even through the ratty blanket covering her legs, I could see the tremors that wracked them - a result of both the cold and the Cruciatus that I knew Bellatrix and the Lestranges had inflicted on her earlier in the day. Yet, the girl smiled brightly up at me.

"Can I help you with something, Mr. Malfoy?" She asked the question brightly as if she were a clerk at some business and a customer had just walked in. The girl didn't seem to realize she was a prisoner in my house and had undergone rather prolonged torture earlier in the day.

Bellatrix had emerged from the dungeon furious after several hours with the prisoners, the last hour of which the entire Manor had heard the eerie song floating up from the cellar. She had been out of her mind with frustration that the girl didn't react normally to anything. The image of the crazed witch, eyes bright, hair bouncing in all directions, proclaiming the girl to be mad, was one that caught my attention. Bellatrix Lestrange questioning anyone's sanity was an enticing concept I could not resist.

I stared at the girl before me, weighing my path forward. If she were truly mad - mad enough to not understand pain - my usual tactics would likely prove ineffective. Decision made: I slowly crossed the room toward her, dragon leather boots clicking on the stone floor, and sank into a crouch before her. My robes puddled on the floor around me, and I realized with distaste that I would likely need to vanish them after touching whatever filth the years had seen build up on these stones. The girl did not shrink back or even look unsettled by my sudden presence directly in front of her. Clearly, she didn't have the wits to understand the seriousness of the situation in which she found herself. She blinked up at me, huge blue eyes filled with hopeful expectation as she watched me. Perfect.

"A better question, my dear," I kept my voice gentle as I spoke, "Would be is there anything I can do for you."

She blinked as if, for all her optimism, she hadn't been expecting that. Then she opened her mouth and had the nerve to ask for a warmer blanket. "It's so cold and damp here, you see, and this one is so worn and thin. I'm afraid it doesn't do very much to keep me warm." She lifted her hand to demonstrate, and before I could react, she had placed her icy fingers against my wrist. Startled, I jumped slightly at the contact, shocked that she not only had the courage but the inclination to touch one of her captors. "I'd always thought your hair was white," she murmured absentmindedly, staring at me and letting her head fall to the side, "But up close, it has bits of pale gold in it. How interesting. Unless it's only the dimness of the room playing tricks on me."

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. The familiarity with which she spoke implied an established friendship, or at least acquaintance, rather than the brief, antagonistic moments that made up our only previous interactions. She really was mad. For once, Bella hadn't lied. Well, the mystery had been solved, at least. The girl no longer held any interest for me. Rather than simply leave, though, I decided to play a little bit more.

"I'll make sure you're given a warmer blanket," I assured her, smiling to myself as I thought of her waiting day after day for a comfort that would never come. I had no reason to visit her like this again, so her wait would be a long one.

"Mr. Malfoy," I was almost to the door when her quiet voice paused me. Turning my head, I saw that she had leaned forward toward me, and her hopeful, vacant expression was replaced with confusion. "How long have you been like this? How long have you not been alone?"

I went ramrod straight and felt the hair on the back of my neck standing up. I narrowed my eyes and took her in more fully, my evaluation of her more thorough. Surely she couldn't mean…she had no way of knowing…

But she held my gaze, steady and strong. The girl staring at me was anything but vacant, anything but mad; quite the opposite - her piercing stare was a bit too lucid for comfort. A bit too perceptive for safety. I suddenly felt exposed under her gaze and overwhelmed by a visceral need to be away from her. I turned on my heel and almost rushed out of the cellar, slamming the door behind me with a bone-shaking clang. I took the stairs to the main floor two at a time and found myself slightly out of breath. I stood there, panting, needing to collect myself before I saw anyone else. Slowly, I felt my heart beat slow as the familiar calm of Occlumency filled my mind.

The girl was a threat. I didn't know how, but she had seen something in me that no one ever had. She had seen right through me in a two-minute conversation where no more than a dozen words were exchanged. It was unacceptable. I supposed I could simply order Bella to kill her, claiming that she knew nothing and only took up space. Something felt lacking with that possibility, though. Then I realized: how much better, how much more satisfying, what beautiful irony if, rather than a swift death, the girl was truly driven insane. I grinned wickedly to myself as the plan cemented itself in my head. The girl would suffer a fate most fitting, and what a beautiful game I would play as I watched her slowly turn mad.

I woke with a start, frantically glancing around, sure I was in the Manor. But no, I was in my bed in the Slytherin dormitory. I was at Hogwarts. The oppressive dark told me it was still the middle of the night. I sat up, ignoring the sweat-soaked sheets as I grappled for breath. The sounds of my ragged breather were rough and loud in my ears, and I instinctively reached for my wand, casting a wordless silencing charm on my bed. The last thing I wanted was to wake the other boys. No one could see me fighting like this. I just needed a few more seconds. A few more seconds to calm the hell down and bury the emotions crashing through me behind a thick layer of fog.

The calm descended on me just like it had in the dream. I tensed again as I thought about it. That dream wasn't a memory. I'd never spoken to Lovegood while she was at the Manor. I'd never even gone to the cellar during those months. That conversation never happened, but it had felt so very real. The thoughts running through my head had been so loud they had almost hurt. Knowing her, Lovegood's reactions had been precisely what I would expect, except for her odd question that had filled me with dread, fear, and a wave of anger that I couldn't explain. I'd never imagined or schemed about her torment, yet the plan forming in my mind had been so clear and so twisted. It made no sense.

I could barely make out the window against the far wall in the dimness. During the day, some light from the lake's surface would filter down through the murk, shedding enough light on the waters outside for us to catch occasional glimpses of the creatures swimming by. Those creatures were like me. They'd been surrounded by a war they'd never asked for, unable to flee, trapped with the consequences. I wondered if any of them ever wished they could leave. Leave behind the stain of dark magic that I still felt hovering here, the remnants of the evil that had taken over their home, even if it was temporarily.

I shoved my hands through my hair, tugging until I felt the first twinges of pain, letting the sensation pull me back into the present moment. It hadn't been real. It was a sick, twisted nightmare that my brain had created out of the sick, twisted nightmare that Lovegood and I had both lived through last year. I shoved the dream deeper into the fog until I couldn't feel it anymore. There was only cold, and calm, and quiet. My mind was a forest at dawn after a stormy night. Nothing loomed before me; nothing lurked over my shoulder; there was nothing but fog for miles.

Before this stupid war, this idiotic power struggle that destroyed so many lives, the Slytherin table would have been a lively place to eat breakfast. Greg and Vince would have been trying - and dismally failing - to play some sort of prank on someone. Probably the Gryffindors. They were never bright enough to actually pull anything off, but they kept trying. My subconscious regularly reminded me of the definition of insanity, and I would shake my head at the two dimwits. Blaise would have been subjecting Theo to a no doubt highly embellished tale of his exploits the night before - far too loudly, might I add. He always seemed to think that advertising his status as a man-whore would make girls fall at his feet. I honestly had no desire to know whether or not he was correct. Blaise's…adventures weren't quite my cup of tea. The rest of the table would have been crowded around us, trying to become a part of our group or at least be close enough to hopefully be mistaken for part of it.

The war had happened, though, as if I could bloody forget, and the breakfast table forcibly reminded me. Vince was dead. Blaise had been in Italy since the end of sixth year, having had the sense none of the rest of us did to get out before he found himself neck-deep in shit. Greg and his mother had fled to South America as soon as Snake Eyes fell. Theo and I were the only ones of us left to sit at our usual end of the table. The rest of the students at the table sat at the opposite end now. Many Slytherin families had left England after the war, hoping to distance themselves from the taint of Riddle's name and re-establish themselves in cultures that didn't instantly distrust anyone in green and silver. As a result, our table was borderline empty, and those who still sat at it wanted nothing to do with us. The ex-Death Eaters. Merlin, hadn't we turned out well?

Theo looked up from his paper as I sat down. Visually, he was Lovegood's complete opposite. While she was a tiny slip of a person, Theo was tall and broad. Where she was light, he was dark. Where she was scattered and unorganized, Theo was neat boxes, a freshly pressed uniform, and hair slicked severely back out of his face. I mentally raised an eyebrow at myself, wondering at how the two most opposite people in this place were the only two people who seemed to have any interest in associating with me.

'Well, you look like shite," He said helpfully, looking back down at his paper and taking a bite of eggs.

"Thanks, I try," I bite back, reaching for a cup of tea. Occlumency, while incredibly helpful for suppressing the conscious mind took quite a bit more practice to successfully suppress the unconscious mind. I was bloody good at Occlumency while awake, not counting the incident a couple of days ago. But I was entirely self-taught and never quite mastered holding it while I slept. So I didn't really sleep the night before. The nightmare was too vivid, too real. I didn't particularly want to relive it; if that was the mood my sleeping brain was in, I wanted no part of it. As a result, I was pretty damned tired, and of course, forever grateful to my loyal friend for pointing it out. There was no sound for a moment other than the hum of the students around us as I piled food onto my plate.

"You got into a dual over Lovegood?"

Thank Merlin, I hadn't sipped my tea yet, or it would probably have come out my nose at that.

Not that getting sprayed with boiling tea wouldn't serve Theo right, but it would be bloody uncomfortable for me. My mate was giving me a half smirk when I looked up at him. As usual, his robes were perfectly straight, with a silver Orobouros pin keeping his tie in place. His hair looked like he'd bloody glued it to his head, leaving no possibility that it might fall into his eyes and soften his gaze. Godric forbid he look less than menacing.

"Who the hell is saying that?" I asked warily. As much as yes, I did need to clean up my image if I wanted to be accepted into the new order of Wizarding society, no one would ever take me seriously if I suddenly started defending the honor of slightly unhinged Ravenclaws every time they got into trouble. And it had hardly been a dual.

"No one," Theo's grin was reminiscent of a shark, "But thanks for confirming it." He went back to his toast and newspaper.

My stare was icy, and I knew he could feel me glaring at him. "Very funny, you prat," I bit out. What an idiot. "I didn't get in a dual. The git was halfway down the hall. All I did was trip him. It's what he tried to do to her, and he didn't know it was me."

Theo's shark grin only widened, "He may not have known it was you, but Weasley sure as hell did. I heard her telling Longbottom about it as I walked in this morning." He huffed out a chuckle, straightening his tie, "The sheer disbelief that you might actually stand up for your friend was hysterical."

"She's not my-"

"Bollocks." He didn't even look at me that time, just turned the page of the Prophet.

She's not my friend, I'd been about to say. I wasn't friends with unstable, weird girls who couldn't even read books properly, girls who certainly weren't part of the Pureblood elite. Though maybe that wasn't entirely fair. Bloody hell, I didn't know what to think about anything anymore. If Hermione Granger bled the same red blood as any wizard I'd ever seen, If Luna Lovegood cared enough to bring me food after what she'd lived through last year, how I'd treated her when we got back to Hogwarts…none of it made sense. I didn't like it when things didn't make sense. I was good at making sense of things, but I couldn't seem to do it with this. A few haunting notes floated through my head, sung in some language I didn't know. No, before the sick feeling could take over my stomach at the memory of that fucking song, it was buried in fog. I couldn't see or hear it anymore. It didn't exist.

"Listen, mate." Theo's voice had dropped to almost a murmur. It was a useless gesture since the few Slytherins at the table were very emphatically at the opposite end from us. We had nothing if not space for a private conversation. "I know you. I know firsthand what it's like to be your friend, God help me, and I know what it's like to watch you pretend it isn't there. You and me? Pretending we weren't friends made sound strategic sense." I gulped, remembering…the fog stole away the thoughts before they could fully form. "But Lovegood?" He raised a challenging eyebrow at me, "What do you gain from hiding it? You're friends, not bloody soul mates. If you could put up with Crabbe and Goyle following you around for years, I hardly think you're worried about her being a little touched in the head." He folded up his paper like he was about to stand up. So, of course, knowing Theo, he was about to deliver what he considered his indisputable parting shot. It usually wasn't indisputable, and this time was no exception. "Times have changed. You can develop other friendships now, mate."

"Oh really," I drawled, not even trying to keep the scorn out of my voice. The git deserved it.

"And just how many friends have you made recently, O Wise One?" I still hadn't even had a sip of my bloody tea. It was too early for this stupidity. He was sounding like some bloody Hufflepuff preaching love and goodwill to all.

He just smirked, though, muttering, "Wouldn't you like to know?" before standing fluidly from the table and sauntering out of the Great Hall. Idiot.

Finally, finally, I took a gulp of my tea, burning my tongue in the process.

Hey, look at that, an update in under two years! Aren't y'all proud of me? =D As always, please let me know what y'all think, reviews are everything!