Find My Way Back.
Title: Find My Way Back
Author: suprockstar
Pairing: Dhr.
Rating: T. Very angsty.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and JKR is God.
Summary: Draco Malfoy has lost his way. He doesn't understand who he is, or what he is, and he may not be able to find his way back. [Set during the War. HBP spoilers].
“I can’t be with you, Hermione! Don’t you understand? The War is coming, you and I don’t have a chance in Hell at being together. Go with him, and forget about me!”
You watch her crack, her being physically break, and right before your eyes, you see the complete shattering of a human being.
Find My Way Back
The end of the war is nearing. He can feel it. In his bones, in his veins, in his skin, the mark of the greatest evil burning in the harshest way possible. He can feel it in the evil upon his body, and he can feel it in the evil in his being. He can feel it in his wand, reckless spells robbing whoever it pointed to of life (they were all people, all human).
He can sense the difference upon the battlefield. How the air grew heavy with desperation, blood (dirty, pure, it was all the same) spilling from bodies, more often than ever before. Spells were used with abandon, for if it actually hit the target, it really didn’t matter.
The End is driving him mad. How tangible he seems in his mind, how clear, how perfect he imagines it. But upon the battlefield, with bodies ridden everywhere without a cause, it is harder for him in grasp. The idea turns foreign, forgotten. For who can think about the End, when each day seems just like the beginning?
He used to be bothered by killing, used to refuse, used to try with all might to spare anyone he could. Remember the dark deed he couldn’t do? He remembered and it ate at him everyday he breathed, everyday he was alive, and Dumbledore was dead. Seeing someone die was the end for him, seeing the man he knew, everyone knew, perish into the ground, lifeless, was all too much. He refused to ever say those two words to another human being (that was when he recognized people as human, that was when he recognized himself, as human).
He was not a killer. He was not a killer. He was not a killer.
That changes when he murders a man. Green light fills the air, it becomes all he sees. He doesn’t see the life leave the eyes of the unknown man. It is only self-defence, and he tells himself this (again and again). It doesn’t seem so bad, so he does it again (and again and again, until he loses count), and it continues not to seem so bad.
He doesn’t like to think about why he did it, he doesn’t like to think about it at all. He just does it, because that is the only way to survive, that is the only way to win. He used to say this to himself whenever he would let those two horrid (only at the time. Now they go from horrid to necessary) words, slip from beneath his tongue, and hoping that those words would make him feel less like a killer, and more like a man. He doesn’t anymore (they’ve stopped working).
“Go with him!” You shout at her, your voice harsh, cruel, perfect.
She looks at you, with those big, brown eyes that you used to think were full of mud, just like the rest of her. But now, it is all you can do not to look back into those orbs you’ve stared into more times than you can remember.
“No!” She shouts back, her cheeks stained with tears, sorrow. “I don’t want to be with him, Draco! I want to be with you, and I know you want to be with me too!”
“I can’t be with you, Hermione! Don’t you understand? The War is coming, you and I don’t have a chance in Hell at being together. Go with him, and forget about me!”
You watch her crack, her being physically break, and right before your eyes, you see the complete shattering of a human being.
He points his wand in front of him, mumbling spells, curses, whatever comes to his mind, as his feet trace a maze between the bodies lying all around him. The air is full of green, of red, and various colors of death, and he momentarily tries to remember what color the sky had been before all of this.
A wave of bushy, brown hair enters his field of view, and his body tenses (with happiness, with fear? He doesn’t know), and causes his breath to catch in his throat, and his heart to pound, so hard against his chest.
All he thinks about is her, her hair, her eyes, her smile. These thoughts momentarily cloud his thoughts, blocking the part of his brain that repeats the word kill to him.
And he feels impeccable sorrow, intense regret.
The feeling passes when he realizes that those eyes were not brown, but very much blue, and it is not her.
He raises his wand, spits out those two words, green light blinds him, and death happens.
He walks away, in pursuit of the next.
You are crying, and you have never felt this pathetic in your life. Never when your father beat you in a way that made you scream and shout your wish to never have been born. It feels terrible to you, to show this kind of weakness. But it is all you can do to protect her from the monster you know you will become. Because war is a sort of thing that does that to you. You have seen the affects upon the Deatheaters that had fought the First War. Once they started killing, they were unable to stop.
You plead to the sky, that she will forgive you, that she will take you back, once the War is all over. And you hope, that after the War is done, you will not be a monster anymore.
Killing is second nature to him, and he almost cannot help himself, at times even forgetting what he has done (and what he is going to do over and over again, until he loses count), as if he were merely breathing, his heart merely beating.
As his feet crunch against the hard, barren land before him, his destination even unknown to him (all he knew was, kill, kill, kill), he sees the black outlines of the building he used to call home. High in the sky, its towers plummeting its tips until the milky glow of the moon, the stars surrounding it. He suddenly cannot breathe, and he stops mid step, his grey eyes transfixes on the hollowed walls of the castle.
He knows that the Order thought of Hogwarts as their last beacon of hope, for if it were still standing, they must too (he forces himself to laugh at this, during the dark times he believes it too). He doesn’t like to think of the castle at all. Death, fear, cowardice. That is what he thinks when his mind wanders away from his constant restraint and into the grasps of the dark. He cannot think of that school without feeling something, and it leaves him distraught, paranoid, anxious, in ways he doesn’t allow himself to understand. He doesn’t permit himself to remember the great hall (“Hey, pass those mashed potatoes!”), the classrooms (“…And when the stars align along …”), and never, never, never lets his mind to wander that far to the moment his soul had been shattered by the dark deed he could not do. (“…I-I-I’ve got to do this!”).
Your wand shakes pathetically, and all you want to do is die, right here in the tower where he is supposed to die. You are more than willing to take his place, and when some part of you recognizes this horrid feeling, something cracks. You feel the split, physical pain inside of your chest, as your mind races at the consequences of what you are going to do, and what you are not. You think of your father, sitting in Azkaban, and as much as you resent him, you cannot help but believe that if you do this, all will be forgiven, and it would as if your father had never failed in the Dark Lord’s eyes. You think of your mother too, her tear-filled eyes trying oh so hard to penetrate your stone, hard ones, begging you not to go through with it (you think stupidly, that she is getting her wish). You think of Pansy, and Blaise, and even of the fucking Boy Who Lived, and your head is in excruciating pain, and you beg for all of this to stop, beg and beg, until your thoughts snap and all you can think about is her. She had pleaded you, with fists against your chest, and frantic tears of desperation, not to join them, and be with her, and when you finally showed her the darkness upon your forearm, she just pleaded even more.
You wish that you had never been given this task, and you are aware of how low and pathetic you sound, and at the moment you are very much low and pathetic. Your heart is tearing, and your body is cracking, and your brain is working on overdrive, those two words on the tip of your tongue. The headmaster’s eyes are staring hard at you, as if he knows something that you do not. The force from his gaze is unbearable, and it all just so insufferable and he doesn’t know how much more he can take.
Your hand shakes, and it drops a fraction of an inch, because you are just so tired and you make yourself believe that is the reason why, and that you are not a coward, no, you are not! And you are most definitely not doing this for her.
Hot tears stream down your cheeks, as you fully lower your arm, the heaviness of what you have just done bombards your body, and that is when your soul shatters into pieces.
He thinks about all those years he had wasted in that school - if you can even call it that, for he can barely remember learning a single thing (or maybe, it is the fact of that suddenly she has clouded his memories, and she is always present in his mind, and she is all he ever see when he thinks about Hogwarts) - and he is almost so disgusted, that he could laugh. He could laugh. But he doesn’t.
It’s hard to remember how.
He can feel his mind wander back to the corridors of the castle, the common room that was far from cozy, but a home all the same. He grips his wand harder, his knuckles turning a pale white, like marble, and grits his teeth. He cannot think like that. He is not allowed to think like that. His willpower is stronger than he thought, and suddenly his mind returns to the present (kill, kill, kill, fills his mind once again).
He moves right, and left, and every which way to avoid the bodies, empty of blood, empty of life, all around him. In the back of his mind, he is counting how many are littered upon the ground, how many he has passed, and how many he had killed. How many he didn’t have to come across ever again, and how many left, he will have to face.
You run down the metal stairs, an escape, a way out, that was what they were. You run, and all you can focus on, is the heavy trail of the black robes in front of you, because they were leading the way out, weren’t they? You run, and you feel your heart beating like a hammer against your chest, and you cannot believe what you have just done, what you have just witnessed.
As you continue to follow those dark robes (you don’t care to check whose they were), down more stairs, through the Great Hall, and finally, you see the bask of the moonlight, a way out from this prison streaming from the giant doors, only a few more meters away. You are the last of the group, trailing like a bloody dog.
And then you see her, her robes tattered, standing in the shadows, and it’s obvious that she’s been fighting, and your heart stops. You don’t understand why she is there, and not with Potter, and him. Your shattered being simply cannot take any more, and you know hers is just the same, and so you try to end the suffering before any more damage can be done.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and you are not sure she has even heard, for you are out through the doors, and into the night, and you don’t look back. Not once. Not ever.
The War has been raging on for a year, too long, too many deaths, and it’s a wonder that he is still alive. He thinks that it is because he refuses to be foolish, to care about the wellbeing of others, to feel, and he is sure that this is the reason alone.
Across the battle field, his gaze lands upon a moving shadow, and his fingers tighten over the wood it carried. His body stiffens with determination (to kill, kill, kill), and his feet move, ever so experienced, until he is close, and he senses yet another victory.
His tongue is loose, and the words are halfway out of his mouth, until he spots that brown hair, bushy and dishevelled (just like he remembered), upon the head of who he was aiming for.
His heart halted, and he is almost afraid that he cannot stop. His mouth hangs open, the curse, so easily could it roll off of his tongue. The mechanics inside his mind are colliding, and he cringes in physical pain.
His feet continue to carry him forward, and he cannot stop acting on instinct, because that is who he is, and it is much too late to change that. She does not turn around, and he cannot help but think that this cannot be her, for surely she can hear his hollowed footsteps, masked whispers against the barren land. He carries on, and he is so close, and he cannot stop his feet, and it is afraid of what will happen once his wand senses it’s prey in the midst, and it will react, because that is what it is trained to do, that is what he is trained to do.
His breathing is rapid, and he knows that he is being foolish, and that indisputably she has heard him come up from behind her. But somehow, she hasn’t, and his heart is pounding so hard against his chest, that his ribs utterly could not take anymore beatings.
The end of his wand comes in contact with black robes, and he is momentarily surprised by how close he has gotten, how close he is now. The figure before him, whips around, and in those muddy, muddy brown eyes, shock is visible, and her vulnerability is much too bright, and he is trying his hardest not to look away. It is her, never in the year apart, has he allowed himself to ever think of her, but now it feels like all those pent up memories, banished from his mind so long ago, are escaping, and it is all he can do, not to slam his eyelids shut, and force those moments out from every pore of his body.
“How many stars do you think are out there?” She whispered.
“I don’t know,” you say back, shifting your arm from under your head.
“Ever feel like you want to count them all?” She continues, and her voice is like a soothing lullaby to you, lulling you into a peaceful nirvana. Never have you felt so calm. “I do. But I always lose count when I’m by myself, when one is there to remind me what number I’ve just said, and then I try again, and again and well, it never works out in the end.”
The grass is digging into your neck, and you turn your head slowly from the sky to your left, and there she is, lying beside you.
“Don’t worry, Granger. I’ll count them with you.”
He looks down at her arms, and sees that her hands are bare, still by her sides, and this makes his heart shoot up into his throat. (“Draco, Draco, you are not a killer.”) He knows that she is not going to fight back, he knows that she cannot fight back, and that is what is daunting him. What ever happened to the fearless Gryffindor, prepared for any battle?
Her chest is heaving, and her breaths are coming out in short, heavy spurts, and he wonders if this is just an act, that this fear is a disguise, because the Granger he knows, would never show fear, would never ever like the enemy see it, and never let the enemy see that she is wand less either. And well, he is the enemy, and he is seeing it. (“How do you know? You don’t know what I’m capable of, you don’t know what I’ve done!)
His wand is shaking feverously, now against her neck, and it is embarrassing that he is showing this kind of hesitation. The curse is at the tip of his tongue, but somehow, it has not slipped beyond the barrier of his control, because he needs to say it (for those words have gone from horrid to necessary), he must say it. Because he is a monster, and that is what monsters do. Kill. (“I’m not afraid, it is you who should be scared!”)
She is unarmed, and at his mercy. (“No, Draco. It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now.”) He can feel her trembling from beneath his wand, as her eyes are staring hard into his, as if the wooden stick in between did not exist.
This is too familiar, and he doesn’t like it. (“Draco, you are not a killer.”) The words of the old man is ringing in his ears, much too loud, much too powerful, and he swears that he is going to go deaf from the noise it is causing in his mind, and his brain just very well explode. (You are not a killer. You are not a killer. You are not a killer.) It is all too much, and he cannot take anymore, and as the shoulders of the monster slump with defeat, his wand is dropped to his side, and before he realizes it is happen, hot stinging tears spew onto his cheeks, and it is all too much.
His mind is defeated, his body is defeated, and like every night when he is not a monster anymore, he begs for the End to come. He falls to the ground of the battle field, his wand slipping from his trembling grasp, and just like that, he is defeated. He pulls his legs up to his chest, and burrows his face full of shame into his knees.
“I knew you wouldn’t do it.” She whispers quietly, and that voice, the one he had thought was too screechy, and too high until he really listened (fifth year), floated into his ears, consuming all his thoughts of the past (of what he did, and what he couldn’t do).
His chest is heaving, wracking so harshly with his sobs, as his cries are clawing at his throat, and he begs to know what is happening to him.
Is he dying? Is this what death feels like? Helplessness, defeat, vulnerability? No curse has hit him, no jinx, no blade, nothing. But something has killed Draco Malfoy, before he could kill it, and he is not sure what it is.
“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” She repeats, her voice louder, nearer. “I know you, Draco.”
His head shoots up in alert at those words, and his faces contorts itself into a horrid sneer, seeing her wide eyes, inches from his face.
“You don’t know me, Granger! You don’t know what I’ve done this year, you don’t know how many lives I’ve taken, you don’t know how much blood I have spilled.” His tone is heavy with vehemence and he hopes that this will scare her away.
It doesn’t work though. He should know better, she has never been afraid of him.
“You don’t know what kind of monster I’ve become.” He says this part quietly, but heavy all the same, as they reveal the hidden darkness that he has forced to overcome his body, for the War. He had to become cruel, heartless, a killer, if he wanted to survive, to live, to be with her again. Because that was the only way. She was never supposed to see him like this, covered in blood, all that did not belong to him. He was not supposed to be a monster when he returned to her.
Tears continue to fall, hot, burning, and he tries his hardest to wipe them away before she can see them, but it is much too late, and he is much too tired. His heart strains as he suddenly feels her warmth envelope his body, and he simply does not have the strength to push her away. And there he is, he is sobbing like a fucking baby, in her arms, and he begs once again for this War to be done.
“Is that why you told me to be with Ron? That, what? You were afraid you were going to turn into a monster, fighting in the War?” Her voice cracks, but it remains soft all the same. “I know you, Draco. You are the one who is always trying to beat my marks, because I was always first, and you hated being second. You are the man who chose to face the wrath of Voldemort instead of killing a beloved professor, and Draco Malfoy, you are who I love with every fibre of my being!”
At that, he drops his eyes, and never in his life has he ever felt this much shame, and it is clouding all his other emotions, and he is drowning the despicable feeling. “I lost myself, Hermione.” His voice is low, raw, and it almost hurts for him to say this. “Somewhere along the way, I decided that if I turn myself into this - this thing, it would help me survive. I chose to become a monster. I don’t know if I can find my way back to you.”
As the two shattered beings collide, and their hearts beat the same rhythm, and their breaths follow the identical pace, something happens inside of him, he feels it (the part of him that turns things from horrid to necessary) slipping away, emptying from his body.
“You already have.” she whispers against his neck, the warmth from her breath floating across his skin, and he believes her words.
He feels heat, at the center of his chest, and abruptly he knows what it is. She is mending him, she is healing his shattered being, and hopefully, he is healing hers. Because the End of the war is nearing, but not fast enough for the two people sharing a love so great, that nothing could tear them apart. Not blood, not separation, not War. They need the End to come, they need the End for them to live again, for them to be free, empty of the burdens of those they had to protect, those they had to fight for, and those they had to fight against.
She takes his hand in hers, and for the first time in a long time, he feels whole again, and it’s indescribable. Lifting his head, he pierces her chocolate eyes with his silver ones, and every moment they have lost to the War, to the fight against the Dark and the Light, is visible in both of their glassy orbs. Every moment they’ve ever wanted to happen plays out in their minds, and its wonderful, and heart wrenching, and suddenly they decide something simultaneously, together.
They will not wait for the End to begin. They will not wait. For everything they were fighting, seems pointless now, useless, and the only fighting they are going to do now, is for their love to thrive, and grow.
Their hands grip tight in the hold of each others, and together, they do not wait for the End, but rather, take it upon themselves to enter the Beginning. The Beginning of theirs lives, where they will live, where they will be free, where they will love.
Together they step off the battle field.