Between Darkness and Light (Chapters 1 & 2)
Just thought I'd stick this up here for a start, if anyone by chance finds, reads and enjoys it, do let me know :)
Title: Between Darkness and Light.
Disclaimer: First and foremost, I do not own any of the characters, locations, objects etc. in the ‘Potterverse‘, I’m simply making use of them. They are all J.K Rowling’s creations; hers entirely, and I am not about to claim otherwise. I also do not claim any ownership of any lyrics that may crop up at the beginning of each chapter and I will give due credit to those I use where appropriate.
Just no one try and sue me, k? The only thing I lay claim to is some of the ideas in this fic and an OC or two.
Summary: A new world order from Draco Malfoy’s POV (subject to change along the way lol). AU, Post-DH. Possibility of spoilers cropping up.
After the Battle of Hogwarts reaches it‘s climactic end, Lord Voldemort has finally risen victoriously, Harry Potter is dead, and the face of the wizarding -- and indeed muggle -- world as we know it, has undoubtedly changed forever.
Warnings: Violence. Substance Abuse. Bad language. Potential DH Spoilers. Possible sexual scenes.
A/N: AU fic, but one that follows canon pretty much up until the last few chapters of DH, albeit with a few possible changes here and there in plot throughout the series of books. Anything that deviates from canon when it comes to back story, will be noted in due course and if a difference is not mentioned in the story, then it’s safe to assume it sticks to canon. Also, it’s probably worth noting that my basis for characters veers strongly towards the RP group I am a part of (Myspace - HPRPU), so forgive any discrepancies with the characters you think you know and love, as they may well stray from that lol. Also, I'm rating this M as of the start, simply because as it's going to lean that way from pretty early on even though the first chapter is tame. So don't moan that it's wrongly labelled, I HATE when people do that! - This story is NOT a oneshot, therefore the rating is for the story itself; to be applied to its completed form. All will make sense in due course, so don't bitch about it yet.
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Chapter One:
The White Room
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“We walk the narrow path, beneath these smoking skies,
Sometimes you barely tell the difference, between darkness and light.
Do we have faith?, in what we believe?
The truest test, is when we cannot, when we cannot see.”
It Can’t Rain all the Time - Jane Siberry.
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There had been no sinister flash of green nor the crippling pain of a spells impact, just the sudden dead weight of his body slumping to the floor of it’s own volition, his eyes open and staring blindly ahead as a great wash of blackness covered over him, as if a heavy blanket had been thrown over the battle; thrown over the world. All that remained now was a darkness so deep that the frozen figure felt hard pressed to stare into it any longer; an infinite dusk to which his eyes soon shut.
There was no sting to his descent and no fire and brimstone awaiting him after he had fallen, no stab of pitchforks or snarling demonic visages to welcome him to what he was sure could very well be a long term vacation in hell. In point of fact, when he had finally dared to open his eyes, there was nothing. Simply nothing. A vast white chasm that stretched out around him for miles and miles in all directions - no hint of a landscape or single breath of wind, just a still, blanched oblivion. It was as if all life bar his had simply ceased to exist. ‘Perhaps it’s merely the antechamber to the afterlife then’ he thought with the first of many bitter smirks.
His body, despite a slight air of uncertainty regarding it’s own stability, slowly twitched into being, every nerve abruptly springing into life amidst its insensible surroundings. There was still no pain though, merely the few telling signs that there should be pain present; a few cuts and scrapes, as well as a rather long and noticeably deep gash along the side of one arm, which throbbed quietly beneath his torn sleeve as it bled violent drips of colour onto the stark white floor.
Rather stunned by the lack of the pain that had previously coursed through his veins, he shrugged agreeably to himself at the change before raking his fingers along the seamless floor, marvelling in its slight coldness given that he had felt nothing thus far. Having become a little more accustomed to being at such a sensation, his bloodied arms soon made easy work of pushing him up off of the ground and into a seated position, propping himself up on one arm as he stared around his desolate surroundings, with nothing but the occasional sound of his blood dripping onto the floor for companionship. Such silence fast becoming beyond frustrating, he called out into the still air - willing a reply to follow, but it didn’t.
Instead, his voice seemed to be sucked up into the ether just as soon as it had left his mouth, leaving the same dense silence in its stead and a panicked frown on the boy‘s face.
Declining the urge to submit to the fear that was now boiling beneath the surface, he slowly pushed up from the ground once more and rose to his feet, such an action causing the room to swell around him as though someone had just fed him a large dose of a rather potent shrinking potion. Looking around the widened space before him, he had never felt smaller or more insignificant in all of his 18 years; for one who had always seen himself as a big splash in the pond of life, it was rather hard to be left hopelessly flapping against the still surface and not have a single ripple to show for his efforts.
His face paled, his frown growing larger by the second; Whatever could be described as life here, seemed long past futile.
It was hollow and raw and severe.
Perhaps this was hell after all.
--
--
What felt like hours after initially fumbling around in his tangled robes and trying his wand, he had sighed dejectedly to himself and tossed the wooden object angrily across the brightly lit space. His spell-work had worked, in a sense, but he seemed to only be capable of magic that was the equivalent of parlour tricks for muggles, to various pointless ends, all of which were now strewn across the floor in front of him. Wildly coloured blooms of flowers, gleaming carved goblets, colourful wisps of smoke and explosions of fire, he could manage. But when it came to locator spells, apparition, summoning charms, or any attempt to glean a slight indication as to where exactly he was, his wand merely sparked lifelessly and seemed to almost wilt under the pressure of trying for such a pleasant end. Even his most brutal selection of hexes had merely jetted into the distance until their vivid colour had become so far off that it faded completely into the ever-white horizon.
He sunk to his knees, eyeing the wand across from him with a colossal air of contempt for a moment before slumping down more so onto the floor, his entire body shaking as he put a hand to his head and let out a couple of dry bewildered sobs. The questions twirled round in his brain like an out of control spinning top, clashing noisily against the walls of his mind before spinning mercilessly in the opposite direction. ‘Is this a dream? Some sort of coma? A spell to mess with my mind? .. Or..‘ he gulped ‘Am I.. dead? ..’ biting back another sob at the thought, he frowned suddenly, looking upwards in confusion as a crackling sound resounded somewhere within the radiance of the room.
“Master Malfoy?…”
The voice faded for a brief moment before sounding again in a delicate whisper.
“Draco?”
His head turned frantically in all directions at the sound splitting the silence a second time, trying to determine its source and fast getting lost in the faint echo of it as it bounced around the nothingness in a way that seemed rather baffling given the place‘s effects on his own voice. He stood up again, turning around on the spot and staring up into the sparse vacuum that was his holding cell, screaming out in vain to the disembodied voice; his own words disappearing inertly into the air with every attempt, crumbling as though an ancient ruin under the footfalls of a particularly heavy set man. The voice sounded again, this time accompanied with a sigh and a clear edge of fear to its tone.
“I thought he stirred, madam, but apparently I-- I was mistaken. My most humble apologies, madam. Forgive me.”
There was the unmistakable fizzling crack of a curse being fired, followed by a loud yelp and scurrying footsteps as whoever the mysterious handmaiden was, fled. The sound of her footsteps was soon cancelled out, however, by the sound of a new voice booming through the brilliance of the room.
“Just leave me to it! Why I allow myself to suffer your incompetence day after day is quite beyond me! Filthy muggle scum..”
Draco’s heart leapt slightly at the sound of his mother‘s voice, ringing as clearly in the air as though she was stood right beside him. His eyes widened; if he could hear her, then perhaps she could hear him in return? Such thinking in mind, his mouth opened and his voice pleadingly, furiously screamed out into the abyss, relentlessly calling out to Narcissa Malfoy long after his throat was raw and his words were mere whispering echoes of their predecessors.
And then there was silence. Again.
--
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“D-- Do you think he’s.. going t--to.. live..”
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“That damn house elf was more use than you could ever
dream to be, you disgusting wretch!”
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“Don’t look at me like that.. I’m only trying to help!”
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“Just bring me a bottle of Firewhiskey,
I’m sure I‘ll be far more inclined to read if I'm on the way to being drunk..”
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The days -- or what Draco imagined to be days; for all he knew, it could have been either mere minutes or several full years since he had fallen to the ground and the world had been lost beneath him -- continued like this; random pockets of sound violently erupting in the space for moments at a time before they vanished as swiftly as they had come. Draco had felt no stab of hunger in this time, no ache to his bones, no sensation of the air or the brilliance of sleep for his entire duration in what he had come to dub simply as ‘the white room‘. It was as though the world in which he had once lived, only existed in these tiny moments of noise, and that was enough to keep him going. Barely so, but enough.
He waited for such moments in near silence more often than not; having rescued his wand not long after tossing it aside and holding it as close to his chest as if it were a newborn heir, that was, of course, in between the moments that he had chosen to implement every spell he could fathom to try and escape the clutches of this barren world. Aside from that, he had kept himself vaguely amused with numerous enchantments; conjuring various seemingly useless objects to pass the time with and seeing what he could do to occupy himself with such things as a clean pressed shirt, a chocolate frog that he had repeatedly charmed to the point of it melting into a less-than-froglike shape, several rather ornate vases as well as a deck of exploding snap cards that for some reason didn‘t detonate; anything to keep himself sane. He had to keep his spirits up, this he knew. He wasn’t quite sure how he knew, but the innate pang of certainty towards such a fact that grew inside his chest each time he wanted to give up, was enough to keep him from caving in to the misery of such a bleak seeming situation.
But, all in all, it was the sporadic voices that actually kept him sane; even his most amused hours always seemed to be spent purely sat in wait for his next glimpse into what was happening back in the real world. He had sadly heard no news of the war as of yet; of who had won, lost or perished in the struggle. The only insight he had, was to who was at his proverbial bedside; a thought he had rooted so harshly in reality given the voices of a few choice family and friends, that he was scared to question it every time his mind inquired. Even in his moments of deepest despair, he forced himself to stick to such a conclusion due to the dismal alternative that it was just his imagination running wild, and only ever would be.
He had to believe there was some truth to an existence outside of this place; he couldn’t possibly exist only in his mind, or the remnants of such.
It had to be real,it just had to be.
--
--
The more the time slowly passed him by, the more maddened he began to feel. He had taken to talking to himself without realising it somewhere along the way; the sort of insane mutters that you’d expect from a wasted homeless man on a park bench, half dressed and too fucked up on Crack to remember his own name. He had drawn out long one sided conversations as to the owners of the voices that randomly echoed from the endless space around him, talking at them rather than to them when they boomed forth from above and interrupted his isolated ranting. He cursed the names of everyone who had ever wronged, annoyed or crossed him; Potter, Granger, Dumbledore, Longbottom, Loony Lovegood and the entire Weasley clan, being among the widespread few who had been verbally slammed into the ground again and again in increasingly bitter tones, his voice sharp enough to cut through bone at points as he supplemented the urge to just scream into the void with a few more harsh words aimed toward old enemies. He stared on in near astonishment at the amount of hate in himself sometimes, quietly revelling in a loathing which he had never had the opportunity to effusively explore; it seemed now to be a feeling that was as tangible flesh, and one that only became more fully formed the deeper he dug his fingertips into its skin, tearing out leisurely chunks at his will.
He tried several times to envisage other things, happier things, things that had once existed before this bitter conclusion; agreeable times gone by, faces he had known and would currently kill for the company of, the look that accompanied the sound of laughter whether it was rooted in scorn or elation, the superlatively terrifying expression on his father’s face when he had been wronged. But try as he might, nothing came.
His mind was a blank canvas that no paint could seem to stain, leaving him with a monotonously toned recollection of events in the place of what had once been memories.
Then, suddenly, amidst the tangles of corroded thoughts and screaming accounts of 'what-could-have-been', on a day that Draco could not have named if he had tried his utmost; an entirely new voice sprung forth from the depths of the brightness, it’s three simple words sounding more delighted and swollen with pride than he could remember having heard anyone speak since his confinement.
It was a sound that brought a grin to his lips which felt so foreign that it almost hurt.
“I've got it..."
Chapter Two:
Monochrome
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“She calls me from the cold
Just when I was low, feeling short of stable
And all that she intends
And all she keeps inside, isn't on the label”
Shimmer - Fuel.
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---
Draco had stared around the whitened space for what felt like hours, maybe even days, after the triumphant female voice had punctured his bleak surroundings; staring hopefully as though expecting a figure to rush forward from the ashen backdrop at any moment.
But no one came, nothing had changed, he was still stuck there, alone in the same vast whiteness that had encompassed him long before such a sound had raised his hopes for escape.
The days that followed the voice had continued to bleed into one long and soundless sequence, and the more time passed, the more restless Draco had become with the matter of silence. His nails were bitten right down to the quick, ten bloodied half crescents barely protruding from the tip of each finger on his weathered hands. His hair, he had noticed, seemed to have actually grown a fair bit as well during his internment, and had easily closed the previous gap between his chin and shoulders, resting there in messy blonde tangles. He had searched the place with inherent poise, pacing toward every viewable space he could venture to without his legs tiring of such a mission, walking for hours at a time with no change to his surroundings whatsoever aside from the quiet measured thud of his feet as they hit the stone beneath. Even with such aimless wandering, the wait was excruciating, every minute seeming to last an eternity as he stared aimlessly around himself, hoping that help would come. Hoping that the voice had been right in her findings, whatever they had been.
The only change, had occurred when the light had started to gradually dim. He had not noticed it at first, and only had discerned such a detail from the fact that the faint scar he had on the back of one hand, had become slowly less and less visible; not through such a marking fading at all, but due to the lack of light instead. He had frowned at such a discovery with a sudden confusion that seemed to tear holes in his previous composure; he knew not whether it was his own doing, his own giving up on such a place or perhaps his defeat at the hands of it. Or whether it was some outside interference in relation to the ecstatic words he had heard some time before. But it was disconcerting to say the least, whatever it was, it meant that his time there was almost over, one way or another. This he did know.
He had spent the rest of this time pacing, convinced that the act of keeping himself occupied would somehow give him a little more time, or at least help the time he had left to pass without such degrading consequence as him falling to his knees and sobbing, yet again. With no idea as to how long he had been walking in the same straight line that seemed to stretch on without end, his feet suddenly made the decision to stop for him, his legs weighting him to the spot as if they were made of lead and rendering him quite unable to move any further. Just as he had began to frown at such, there came another new sensation; his throat was suddenly flooded with feeling, a uncomfortable smouldering, burning unbearably as though someone had just emptied a gallon of Firewhiskey down his neck and then set it alight. His hands flew to his throat, trying to stop himself from choking on the invisible substance and soon falling to his knees under the weight of such strangled attempts, scowling through the pain at having submitted to such an action. He was dizzy, completely disoriented as the world span around him within shattered fragments of light. His eyes were begging him to let them close, but he refused, he had to hold on a little longer. He could not cave now; he’d not suffered this long to submit at the last moment.
The world swirled again, tugging Draco further towards the floor and provoking a loud cry to burst from his previously closed mouth as his head made a loud thud against the cold floor. He remembered touching it upon first entering the white room, the sudden delight in feeling it beneath his fingertips; the elation of feeling anything at all. With such a thought in mind, it was as if the world had suddenly come more into focus, his memories reforming painfully in his mind, scratching and clawing their way out of the darkened box they had been forced into and prompting a pained muted scream inside his head. The ache now spanned his entire body, every fibre of his being resonating with sudden feeling; his already narrowed eyes threatening to close any second against the overwhelming sense of self that threatened to rip him apart in its struggle for rebirth. There was another incomprehensible jab of pain, and his eyes finally squeezed shut, a final thought echoing round his head. ‘oh shit..’
---
---
The pain subsided an instant later, his eyes wrenching open all of a sudden as he gasped loud and long, as if inhaling the first true breath he had been allowed in years; and in many a way, it was. His gaze aimlessly scanned the room around him, his movements imprecise and rushed as he tried to take in the sudden rush of the real world entering his vision once more; seeing the room around him not for what it was, but instead as a haze of coloured shapes, all looming towards him with inexorable amount of force. The sight of such an abruptly forming tangle of different shades was rather overwhelming, chaotic tinted bursts leaping at him from all sides, three dimensional and somehow vastly brighter than the previous blinding whiteness had ever been close to. He put a hand to his head, which had suddenly begun to throb, and an exhausted moan escaped his lips as he closed his eyes again, his head shaking.
“Draco?”
His already staggered breath hitched in his throat and he frowned into his palm at the voice, slowly lifting his hand from his face to peer at it’s owner. His eyes widened at the blurred shape beside him coming into focus, the expectant look on her face, the slight pout alongside a deeply furrowed brow, all as familiar as if he had only been away from such expressions for mere moments. He opened his mouth in an attempt to speak, but instead he spluttered, his throat dry and too stiff for words quite yet. Trying a few more times to coax his voice into life once more, he eventually managed to choke out a few raw sounding words, his tone deathly flat; as if he was blissfully unaware of the existence of inflection.
“That depends on who’s asking..”
The figure frowned towards him, reaching a tentative hand and resting it atop his, much to Draco’s sudden shock; the feeling of flesh, the touch of another person, the sense of reality he had spent so long pining for; It existed now, finally. As solidified as if it had never left him. The sensation, the contact, the brilliant shudder of feeling that had shot up his arm at her touch, was incredible. He had been so long without such tangible senses, that the simple matter of touch seemed astonishing, miraculous even.
The girl leant forward with a clearly troubled expression, giving his hand a slight squeeze in tandem with such a look and speaking softly toward him, in a tone that one would usually reserve for a troubled infant.
“Draco.. .. It’s Pans-- Um, it’s Parkinson.. Pansy Parkinson.. You.. You remember me, right?”
He laughed slightly at her words, having had an inkling as to what they would be before her lips had even parted; his reaction to such causing her hand to jet away from his as she sat back in her seat, seemingly stunned by any sound emanating from his still rather gaunt looking form. Coughing out a final chuckle, he looked up at her with a slight raise of his brow, the beginnings of a grin curving the corner of his mouth upwards as he rasped out a reply.
“I’m well aware of who you are, Parkinson.. And I can see Zabini lurking behind you as well, before you ask.. I‘m perfectly sane, thank you very much, just a little.. Overwhelmed..”
He nodded steadily, hoping that neither of the concerned faces in front of him had picked up on the uncertainty to his last few words and frowning to himself as the two exchanged a glance that no doubt meant that his hopes were unfounded. Averting his eyes from the pair of them instantly at such, he took to staring around the room instead of daring to glance back towards either of them.
It was then, and only then, that he noticed where he was: he was at home, actually at home, laying in a large and opulently carved four poster amidst the fine decor of one of the many guest suites that the Malfoy Manor had to offer. His eyes combed the room slowly, scanning over every inch of it, from a line of portraits on the far wall depicting several relatives that Draco had long since forgotten existed, to the dark grey hue of the lavish marble floor with the Malfoy family crest inscribed at its centre, on to the familiar curve of the twin silver serpentine handles set into the heavy oak doors. Smiling to himself as his eyes panned over and over the room, it took him a good few moments to be able to pull his gaze away from the collection of objects surrounding him, ultimately turning back to the expectant faces at his side and frowning slightly as the reality of the situation came flooding back to him.
“How long have I--”
“Eight months.”
Blaise’s voice sounded out, as familiarly deep as ever, cutting Draco’s words short and soon knocking the next planned sentence from his mouth with the dark skinned boy’s deathly serious expression.
“It‘s not quite eight yet.. Near a week under that actually, Blaise” Pansy cut in, blushing as soon as she had done so and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear before continuing in a slightly quieter tone “But, uh.. yeah.. Eight months near enough.”
“Eight mon--”
Words seemed to suddenly fail him, his features paling far beyond his usually pallid skintone as he tried to get his head round such a fact as eight months of non existence, staring fiercely towards his lap at the thought. Eight months.. That was thirty two weeks.. Two hundred and twenty four days.. Five thousand three hundred and seventy six hours.. He frowned deeply at the increasing numbers, shaking his head as though to stop multiplying, and briefly wondering where he had acquired the easy ability to do so. Tearing his gaze away from his steepled hands, he looked back towards the two of them, croaking out a few words once more.
“I don’t understand.. How--”
“Well..” Blaise’s voice interrupted again. “Even we weren’t sure at first.. We thought someone had managed to slip you the draught of living death or something.. But when the antidote for that did nothing at all, we had to start from scratch.. It’s taken weeks to sift through the libraries here, and the ones at Hogwarts as well.. But we found it in the end..” Pansy coughed into her hand tellingly and Blaise rolled his eyes. “Ok, fine.. Parkinson found it in the end.. But anyway, turns out it was an old spell, a really old spell; somewhat of an antiquity of sorts, in fact.. One called Ante Mortem..”
Blaise paused, looking down at his hands and frowning slightly to himself. The tall dark skinned boy looked worse than Draco could recall ever having seen him, it was as if he had not had a decent nights sleep in weeks, or perhaps months given his previous declaration on how long Draco had been.. detained..
At any rate, he was clearly exhausted and apparently finding some difficulty in telling the tale he had spent months living waist deep in. Shooting him a reassuring smile that seemed rather forced, Pansy nodded her head, wordlessly assuming the position of storyteller and sitting forward in her seat beside the bed a little. Draco had to bite back the urge to smirk at such; he could almost imagine a copy of ‘The tales of Beedle the Bard’ sitting in her lap, open at a bookmarked page as she leant forward to narrate the next chapter, her every action seeming rather amusingly reminiscent of a mother putting her child to bed.
Instead, his brow raised curiously, his mouth shut and determined to stay that way until he had a better idea as to what had gone on. As tempting as it was, now was hardly the time for screwing around.
“It’s.. Well, it’s supposed to be sort of a preface for death according to any literature we could find on it..” She paused, frowning slightly “Ancient Dark Wizards used to implement it on their victims while they were pending punishment.. In order to make sure that they wouldn’t live to tell the tale of escaping.. It’s-- It’s sort of an antechamber between the realm of the living and dead..”
She paused again, her frown having grown ten fold at the chuckle that had burst forth from Draco’s mouth alongside her final words. Her expression soon shifted, from nervous bewilderment to a sudden and fierce frustration, her wand in hand before Draco had even had a chance to note she was about to draw it from her pocket. He stared between the wand - that was now near touching the tip of his nose, causing his eyes to cross dizzyingly as he tried to focus on it - and Pansy’s furious expression; trying not to grin at such a sense of normality having resumed before he’d even got himself out of the bed. As he stared, Pansy’s eyes narrowed, her voice a low growl.
“Merlin help me, you’d better have a good explanation for--”
She stopped abruptly, turning her angered frown to one side of her where Blaise had already placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her wand arm, shaking his head at such an action and coaxing her hand back to her side. With a sigh of acceptance from Pansy, the two bedside figures turned back to a still mildly chuckling Draco, who waved a weak hand of dismissal, shaking his head slightly as the two non-Malfoy‘s stared on in quiet disbelief.
“Cheers, mate.. That just sounded absurdly similar to something I thought when I first came round in.. well.. wherever that place was..” he shrugged, feebly nodding towards them both again “Go on, I’m rapt with attention.”
He smirked, earning a matching look from Blaise for a brief moment before Pansy sighed, sounding rather frustrated as she interrupted the boys’ silent exchange in order to speak again.
“It’s dark magic, Draco! Very dark magic.. It’s not designed for longevity.. It’s merely designed to keep the person prisoner until their punishment has been decided upon. Most people die within hours of it being cast..”
Draco frowned curiously, sitting up a little straighter in the bed and tilting his head to one side, his look seeming to plead her to continue. Sighing once more, Pansy nodded, interpreting the look as meant and continuing in a slightly smaller voice.
“Well.. The way it works, is that you’re sort of bound, trapped within the curse until you’ve admitted defeat; until you’ve accepted your fate..”
“What do you mean ‘Accepted your fate?’”
He interrupted with a bewildered frown. Pansy sighed again.
“Well, what applies to you within the binds of the curse, also applies to your existence outside of it. If you give up -- become as lifeless as you feel, cry to the point of exhausting yourself emotionally, lay down and admit defeat, that sort of thing -- then it translates to your state outside; your physical state. Most people give in within hours, days at a push. But generally, people will readily face the fact that they are destined to perish rather than continue their suffering, and they do just that; perish due to the fact that they truly believed that their fate was as such…”
She hesitated again, looking towards him earnestly, a hint of fear clearly visible amidst the darkness of her eyes.
“No one knows how you survived this long, Draco.. Or..”
Blaise rapidly hushed her with a severe frown, his hand rocketing into the air in a bid for her silence; to which she readily complied, hanging her head slightly and pouting towards her lap.
“He needs to rest, Pans.. The other stuff can wait until--”
“Rest?!” Draco’s voice erupted again, his arms folded across his chest as he continued in the same indignant tone. “I don’t want to bloody well rest! I want to walk.. I want to eat, drink, sleep.. Anything but more fucking rest..”
“Don’t argue with me Malfoy, just trust me.” Blaise snapped rather viciously, shooting the boy a glare to which Draco looked utterly lost for words. “We bought you back, so just be grateful for a change and stop whining. It‘s not like we let you die..”
Draco was flummoxed; it was not often that Zabini dared take such a tone with him, even given the fact that the boys had been friends since long before they could remember, and perhaps, in many a way, his refusal to seethe over the blonde’s attempts was indeed due to such a matter holding true. The fact remained that it took something with a level of prominent severity for Blaise to adopt such a tone with him, and it had always been in Draco’s best interest to listen when he did. With a sigh of defeat, the blonde rolled his eyes.
“Fine.. Consider me bed-bound. Just do me a favour and bring me a drink.. A proper drink..”
Blaise smiled briefly, offering a nod and a slight smirk at Draco’s parting words.
“Good boy..” he grinned “One bottle of Ogdens best coming up.. Although I’m limiting you to a single glass. I don‘t fancy getting killed by your mother when she gets back to an alive but clearly drunk Heir to the Malfoy throne..”
Draco’s eyes instantly widened at the mention of Narcissa.. His mother.. The owner of the voice that had caused his throat to burn from trying to scream out after her. The lady whose opinions on pureblood supremacy he had repeated inside his head as though some insane mantra, whose childhood stories he had tried to recount as he lay in the bleakness of the world he had been trapped inside.
He had to see her, had to know she was alive, that her voice had not been a mere illusion of his dreamless state.
“Where is she? … My mother, I want to see her. My Father too.”
Blaise and Pansy both looked at him with matching indecipherable expressions before turning towards each other and exchanging a rather regretful glance, the look on both of their faces seeming far too out of place for Draco to discern what either one meant. Frowning at the exchange and positively hating - as ever - to be left out of the loop even if he wasn’t meant to be included just yet, he sighed frustratedly, his brow furrowing dramatically.
“I had rather hoped that you’d get the point of my previous statement without me having to add the word now into the equation…”
He scowled slightly towards them, his arms still folded harshly across his chest as the two figures before him exchanged another look before nodding, the pair of them heading out of the door - only Pansy pausing in the doorframe to shoot Draco what he was sure was supposed to be a reassuring smile - and leaving him alone in the stillness of the room once more.
---
---
It was not long until the hurried click of Narcissa’s high heeled shoes rang out along the hallway leading towards the guest suite, sidetracking Draco’s attention from the vial he had been twirling in between his fingers and causing his eyes to sweep towards the door with an expectant gaze. As if on cue, the handle clicked upwards and the door swung open, colliding with the wall beside it with a loud bang that the lady of the Manor seemed to either not notice, or not care about whatsoever.
“Oh, my boy!” She near shrieked, hurrying across the room throwing herself atop the bed sheets; flinging her arms around Draco’s neck, burying her head tightly in his shoulder and sobbing delightedly into it between mutters. “My darling boy!”
His eyes had widened at such a display and he found himself quite lost for both words and action for a moment. Throughout his mothers coddling over the years - her constant efforts to put Draco in Lucius’ good books when he had done wrong, her dry kisses on the cheek before he left to board the Hogwarts Express, and her smiling terms of endearment as she would push her son’s hair from his face, commenting on how he was as handsome as his father had been at such an age - he had never seen her being so outwardly emotional and had certainly never been held so tightly, nor fiercely by the woman who was now near threatening to crush his bones under her vice like grip of an embrace. As a Malfoy, it was considered rather unbecoming to show such weakness as positive emotion; his father’s constant and ever stoic refrain was enough to solidify such a fact, and Draco after all, was nothing if not his Father’s son, and therefore rather taken aback by such a motion.
Wrapping his arms around his mother finally and gripping her fiercely for a moment before loosening his hold, his mind suddenly raced back through his previous thoughts until he hit upon one key mention; his Father. Leaning his head over the top of his mothers shoulder and peering around the room for a moment, he soon pushed her slightly away from him, staring her in the eye as his voice sounded out quietly, almost desperately.
“W--Where’s Father?”
Narcissa’s already waxen face paled even more so than usual, her eyes softening and seeming to brim with tears at such a mention. Draco frowned, his heart sinking in his chest as he slumped down a little further in the bed; as much as he hated to even fathom such a thought, he knew the answer to his query without Narcissa having to say a single word.
Lucius Malfoy, was dead.
Title: Between Darkness and Light.
Disclaimer: First and foremost, I do not own any of the characters, locations, objects etc. in the ‘Potterverse‘, I’m simply making use of them. They are all J.K Rowling’s creations; hers entirely, and I am not about to claim otherwise. I also do not claim any ownership of any lyrics that may crop up at the beginning of each chapter and I will give due credit to those I use where appropriate.
Just no one try and sue me, k? The only thing I lay claim to is some of the ideas in this fic and an OC or two.
Summary: A new world order from Draco Malfoy’s POV (subject to change along the way lol). AU, Post-DH. Possibility of spoilers cropping up.
After the Battle of Hogwarts reaches it‘s climactic end, Lord Voldemort has finally risen victoriously, Harry Potter is dead, and the face of the wizarding -- and indeed muggle -- world as we know it, has undoubtedly changed forever.
Warnings: Violence. Substance Abuse. Bad language. Potential DH Spoilers. Possible sexual scenes.
A/N: AU fic, but one that follows canon pretty much up until the last few chapters of DH, albeit with a few possible changes here and there in plot throughout the series of books. Anything that deviates from canon when it comes to back story, will be noted in due course and if a difference is not mentioned in the story, then it’s safe to assume it sticks to canon. Also, it’s probably worth noting that my basis for characters veers strongly towards the RP group I am a part of (Myspace - HPRPU), so forgive any discrepancies with the characters you think you know and love, as they may well stray from that lol. Also, I'm rating this M as of the start, simply because as it's going to lean that way from pretty early on even though the first chapter is tame. So don't moan that it's wrongly labelled, I HATE when people do that! - This story is NOT a oneshot, therefore the rating is for the story itself; to be applied to its completed form. All will make sense in due course, so don't bitch about it yet.
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Chapter One:
The White Room
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“We walk the narrow path, beneath these smoking skies,
Sometimes you barely tell the difference, between darkness and light.
Do we have faith?, in what we believe?
The truest test, is when we cannot, when we cannot see.”
It Can’t Rain all the Time - Jane Siberry.
------------------- -------------------
There had been no sinister flash of green nor the crippling pain of a spells impact, just the sudden dead weight of his body slumping to the floor of it’s own volition, his eyes open and staring blindly ahead as a great wash of blackness covered over him, as if a heavy blanket had been thrown over the battle; thrown over the world. All that remained now was a darkness so deep that the frozen figure felt hard pressed to stare into it any longer; an infinite dusk to which his eyes soon shut.
There was no sting to his descent and no fire and brimstone awaiting him after he had fallen, no stab of pitchforks or snarling demonic visages to welcome him to what he was sure could very well be a long term vacation in hell. In point of fact, when he had finally dared to open his eyes, there was nothing. Simply nothing. A vast white chasm that stretched out around him for miles and miles in all directions - no hint of a landscape or single breath of wind, just a still, blanched oblivion. It was as if all life bar his had simply ceased to exist. ‘Perhaps it’s merely the antechamber to the afterlife then’ he thought with the first of many bitter smirks.
His body, despite a slight air of uncertainty regarding it’s own stability, slowly twitched into being, every nerve abruptly springing into life amidst its insensible surroundings. There was still no pain though, merely the few telling signs that there should be pain present; a few cuts and scrapes, as well as a rather long and noticeably deep gash along the side of one arm, which throbbed quietly beneath his torn sleeve as it bled violent drips of colour onto the stark white floor.
Rather stunned by the lack of the pain that had previously coursed through his veins, he shrugged agreeably to himself at the change before raking his fingers along the seamless floor, marvelling in its slight coldness given that he had felt nothing thus far. Having become a little more accustomed to being at such a sensation, his bloodied arms soon made easy work of pushing him up off of the ground and into a seated position, propping himself up on one arm as he stared around his desolate surroundings, with nothing but the occasional sound of his blood dripping onto the floor for companionship. Such silence fast becoming beyond frustrating, he called out into the still air - willing a reply to follow, but it didn’t.
Instead, his voice seemed to be sucked up into the ether just as soon as it had left his mouth, leaving the same dense silence in its stead and a panicked frown on the boy‘s face.
Declining the urge to submit to the fear that was now boiling beneath the surface, he slowly pushed up from the ground once more and rose to his feet, such an action causing the room to swell around him as though someone had just fed him a large dose of a rather potent shrinking potion. Looking around the widened space before him, he had never felt smaller or more insignificant in all of his 18 years; for one who had always seen himself as a big splash in the pond of life, it was rather hard to be left hopelessly flapping against the still surface and not have a single ripple to show for his efforts.
His face paled, his frown growing larger by the second; Whatever could be described as life here, seemed long past futile.
It was hollow and raw and severe.
Perhaps this was hell after all.
--
--
What felt like hours after initially fumbling around in his tangled robes and trying his wand, he had sighed dejectedly to himself and tossed the wooden object angrily across the brightly lit space. His spell-work had worked, in a sense, but he seemed to only be capable of magic that was the equivalent of parlour tricks for muggles, to various pointless ends, all of which were now strewn across the floor in front of him. Wildly coloured blooms of flowers, gleaming carved goblets, colourful wisps of smoke and explosions of fire, he could manage. But when it came to locator spells, apparition, summoning charms, or any attempt to glean a slight indication as to where exactly he was, his wand merely sparked lifelessly and seemed to almost wilt under the pressure of trying for such a pleasant end. Even his most brutal selection of hexes had merely jetted into the distance until their vivid colour had become so far off that it faded completely into the ever-white horizon.
He sunk to his knees, eyeing the wand across from him with a colossal air of contempt for a moment before slumping down more so onto the floor, his entire body shaking as he put a hand to his head and let out a couple of dry bewildered sobs. The questions twirled round in his brain like an out of control spinning top, clashing noisily against the walls of his mind before spinning mercilessly in the opposite direction. ‘Is this a dream? Some sort of coma? A spell to mess with my mind? .. Or..‘ he gulped ‘Am I.. dead? ..’ biting back another sob at the thought, he frowned suddenly, looking upwards in confusion as a crackling sound resounded somewhere within the radiance of the room.
“Master Malfoy?…”
The voice faded for a brief moment before sounding again in a delicate whisper.
“Draco?”
His head turned frantically in all directions at the sound splitting the silence a second time, trying to determine its source and fast getting lost in the faint echo of it as it bounced around the nothingness in a way that seemed rather baffling given the place‘s effects on his own voice. He stood up again, turning around on the spot and staring up into the sparse vacuum that was his holding cell, screaming out in vain to the disembodied voice; his own words disappearing inertly into the air with every attempt, crumbling as though an ancient ruin under the footfalls of a particularly heavy set man. The voice sounded again, this time accompanied with a sigh and a clear edge of fear to its tone.
“I thought he stirred, madam, but apparently I-- I was mistaken. My most humble apologies, madam. Forgive me.”
There was the unmistakable fizzling crack of a curse being fired, followed by a loud yelp and scurrying footsteps as whoever the mysterious handmaiden was, fled. The sound of her footsteps was soon cancelled out, however, by the sound of a new voice booming through the brilliance of the room.
“Just leave me to it! Why I allow myself to suffer your incompetence day after day is quite beyond me! Filthy muggle scum..”
Draco’s heart leapt slightly at the sound of his mother‘s voice, ringing as clearly in the air as though she was stood right beside him. His eyes widened; if he could hear her, then perhaps she could hear him in return? Such thinking in mind, his mouth opened and his voice pleadingly, furiously screamed out into the abyss, relentlessly calling out to Narcissa Malfoy long after his throat was raw and his words were mere whispering echoes of their predecessors.
And then there was silence. Again.
--
------
“D-- Do you think he’s.. going t--to.. live..”
------------------------
“That damn house elf was more use than you could ever
dream to be, you disgusting wretch!”
-----------------------------------
“Don’t look at me like that.. I’m only trying to help!”
--------------------------------------------------
“Just bring me a bottle of Firewhiskey,
I’m sure I‘ll be far more inclined to read if I'm on the way to being drunk..”
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The days -- or what Draco imagined to be days; for all he knew, it could have been either mere minutes or several full years since he had fallen to the ground and the world had been lost beneath him -- continued like this; random pockets of sound violently erupting in the space for moments at a time before they vanished as swiftly as they had come. Draco had felt no stab of hunger in this time, no ache to his bones, no sensation of the air or the brilliance of sleep for his entire duration in what he had come to dub simply as ‘the white room‘. It was as though the world in which he had once lived, only existed in these tiny moments of noise, and that was enough to keep him going. Barely so, but enough.
He waited for such moments in near silence more often than not; having rescued his wand not long after tossing it aside and holding it as close to his chest as if it were a newborn heir, that was, of course, in between the moments that he had chosen to implement every spell he could fathom to try and escape the clutches of this barren world. Aside from that, he had kept himself vaguely amused with numerous enchantments; conjuring various seemingly useless objects to pass the time with and seeing what he could do to occupy himself with such things as a clean pressed shirt, a chocolate frog that he had repeatedly charmed to the point of it melting into a less-than-froglike shape, several rather ornate vases as well as a deck of exploding snap cards that for some reason didn‘t detonate; anything to keep himself sane. He had to keep his spirits up, this he knew. He wasn’t quite sure how he knew, but the innate pang of certainty towards such a fact that grew inside his chest each time he wanted to give up, was enough to keep him from caving in to the misery of such a bleak seeming situation.
But, all in all, it was the sporadic voices that actually kept him sane; even his most amused hours always seemed to be spent purely sat in wait for his next glimpse into what was happening back in the real world. He had sadly heard no news of the war as of yet; of who had won, lost or perished in the struggle. The only insight he had, was to who was at his proverbial bedside; a thought he had rooted so harshly in reality given the voices of a few choice family and friends, that he was scared to question it every time his mind inquired. Even in his moments of deepest despair, he forced himself to stick to such a conclusion due to the dismal alternative that it was just his imagination running wild, and only ever would be.
He had to believe there was some truth to an existence outside of this place; he couldn’t possibly exist only in his mind, or the remnants of such.
It had to be real,it just had to be.
--
--
The more the time slowly passed him by, the more maddened he began to feel. He had taken to talking to himself without realising it somewhere along the way; the sort of insane mutters that you’d expect from a wasted homeless man on a park bench, half dressed and too fucked up on Crack to remember his own name. He had drawn out long one sided conversations as to the owners of the voices that randomly echoed from the endless space around him, talking at them rather than to them when they boomed forth from above and interrupted his isolated ranting. He cursed the names of everyone who had ever wronged, annoyed or crossed him; Potter, Granger, Dumbledore, Longbottom, Loony Lovegood and the entire Weasley clan, being among the widespread few who had been verbally slammed into the ground again and again in increasingly bitter tones, his voice sharp enough to cut through bone at points as he supplemented the urge to just scream into the void with a few more harsh words aimed toward old enemies. He stared on in near astonishment at the amount of hate in himself sometimes, quietly revelling in a loathing which he had never had the opportunity to effusively explore; it seemed now to be a feeling that was as tangible flesh, and one that only became more fully formed the deeper he dug his fingertips into its skin, tearing out leisurely chunks at his will.
He tried several times to envisage other things, happier things, things that had once existed before this bitter conclusion; agreeable times gone by, faces he had known and would currently kill for the company of, the look that accompanied the sound of laughter whether it was rooted in scorn or elation, the superlatively terrifying expression on his father’s face when he had been wronged. But try as he might, nothing came.
His mind was a blank canvas that no paint could seem to stain, leaving him with a monotonously toned recollection of events in the place of what had once been memories.
Then, suddenly, amidst the tangles of corroded thoughts and screaming accounts of 'what-could-have-been', on a day that Draco could not have named if he had tried his utmost; an entirely new voice sprung forth from the depths of the brightness, it’s three simple words sounding more delighted and swollen with pride than he could remember having heard anyone speak since his confinement.
It was a sound that brought a grin to his lips which felt so foreign that it almost hurt.
“I've got it..."
Chapter Two:
Monochrome
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“She calls me from the cold
Just when I was low, feeling short of stable
And all that she intends
And all she keeps inside, isn't on the label”
Shimmer - Fuel.
------------------- -------------------
---
Draco had stared around the whitened space for what felt like hours, maybe even days, after the triumphant female voice had punctured his bleak surroundings; staring hopefully as though expecting a figure to rush forward from the ashen backdrop at any moment.
But no one came, nothing had changed, he was still stuck there, alone in the same vast whiteness that had encompassed him long before such a sound had raised his hopes for escape.
The days that followed the voice had continued to bleed into one long and soundless sequence, and the more time passed, the more restless Draco had become with the matter of silence. His nails were bitten right down to the quick, ten bloodied half crescents barely protruding from the tip of each finger on his weathered hands. His hair, he had noticed, seemed to have actually grown a fair bit as well during his internment, and had easily closed the previous gap between his chin and shoulders, resting there in messy blonde tangles. He had searched the place with inherent poise, pacing toward every viewable space he could venture to without his legs tiring of such a mission, walking for hours at a time with no change to his surroundings whatsoever aside from the quiet measured thud of his feet as they hit the stone beneath. Even with such aimless wandering, the wait was excruciating, every minute seeming to last an eternity as he stared aimlessly around himself, hoping that help would come. Hoping that the voice had been right in her findings, whatever they had been.
The only change, had occurred when the light had started to gradually dim. He had not noticed it at first, and only had discerned such a detail from the fact that the faint scar he had on the back of one hand, had become slowly less and less visible; not through such a marking fading at all, but due to the lack of light instead. He had frowned at such a discovery with a sudden confusion that seemed to tear holes in his previous composure; he knew not whether it was his own doing, his own giving up on such a place or perhaps his defeat at the hands of it. Or whether it was some outside interference in relation to the ecstatic words he had heard some time before. But it was disconcerting to say the least, whatever it was, it meant that his time there was almost over, one way or another. This he did know.
He had spent the rest of this time pacing, convinced that the act of keeping himself occupied would somehow give him a little more time, or at least help the time he had left to pass without such degrading consequence as him falling to his knees and sobbing, yet again. With no idea as to how long he had been walking in the same straight line that seemed to stretch on without end, his feet suddenly made the decision to stop for him, his legs weighting him to the spot as if they were made of lead and rendering him quite unable to move any further. Just as he had began to frown at such, there came another new sensation; his throat was suddenly flooded with feeling, a uncomfortable smouldering, burning unbearably as though someone had just emptied a gallon of Firewhiskey down his neck and then set it alight. His hands flew to his throat, trying to stop himself from choking on the invisible substance and soon falling to his knees under the weight of such strangled attempts, scowling through the pain at having submitted to such an action. He was dizzy, completely disoriented as the world span around him within shattered fragments of light. His eyes were begging him to let them close, but he refused, he had to hold on a little longer. He could not cave now; he’d not suffered this long to submit at the last moment.
The world swirled again, tugging Draco further towards the floor and provoking a loud cry to burst from his previously closed mouth as his head made a loud thud against the cold floor. He remembered touching it upon first entering the white room, the sudden delight in feeling it beneath his fingertips; the elation of feeling anything at all. With such a thought in mind, it was as if the world had suddenly come more into focus, his memories reforming painfully in his mind, scratching and clawing their way out of the darkened box they had been forced into and prompting a pained muted scream inside his head. The ache now spanned his entire body, every fibre of his being resonating with sudden feeling; his already narrowed eyes threatening to close any second against the overwhelming sense of self that threatened to rip him apart in its struggle for rebirth. There was another incomprehensible jab of pain, and his eyes finally squeezed shut, a final thought echoing round his head. ‘oh shit..’
---
---
The pain subsided an instant later, his eyes wrenching open all of a sudden as he gasped loud and long, as if inhaling the first true breath he had been allowed in years; and in many a way, it was. His gaze aimlessly scanned the room around him, his movements imprecise and rushed as he tried to take in the sudden rush of the real world entering his vision once more; seeing the room around him not for what it was, but instead as a haze of coloured shapes, all looming towards him with inexorable amount of force. The sight of such an abruptly forming tangle of different shades was rather overwhelming, chaotic tinted bursts leaping at him from all sides, three dimensional and somehow vastly brighter than the previous blinding whiteness had ever been close to. He put a hand to his head, which had suddenly begun to throb, and an exhausted moan escaped his lips as he closed his eyes again, his head shaking.
“Draco?”
His already staggered breath hitched in his throat and he frowned into his palm at the voice, slowly lifting his hand from his face to peer at it’s owner. His eyes widened at the blurred shape beside him coming into focus, the expectant look on her face, the slight pout alongside a deeply furrowed brow, all as familiar as if he had only been away from such expressions for mere moments. He opened his mouth in an attempt to speak, but instead he spluttered, his throat dry and too stiff for words quite yet. Trying a few more times to coax his voice into life once more, he eventually managed to choke out a few raw sounding words, his tone deathly flat; as if he was blissfully unaware of the existence of inflection.
“That depends on who’s asking..”
The figure frowned towards him, reaching a tentative hand and resting it atop his, much to Draco’s sudden shock; the feeling of flesh, the touch of another person, the sense of reality he had spent so long pining for; It existed now, finally. As solidified as if it had never left him. The sensation, the contact, the brilliant shudder of feeling that had shot up his arm at her touch, was incredible. He had been so long without such tangible senses, that the simple matter of touch seemed astonishing, miraculous even.
The girl leant forward with a clearly troubled expression, giving his hand a slight squeeze in tandem with such a look and speaking softly toward him, in a tone that one would usually reserve for a troubled infant.
“Draco.. .. It’s Pans-- Um, it’s Parkinson.. Pansy Parkinson.. You.. You remember me, right?”
He laughed slightly at her words, having had an inkling as to what they would be before her lips had even parted; his reaction to such causing her hand to jet away from his as she sat back in her seat, seemingly stunned by any sound emanating from his still rather gaunt looking form. Coughing out a final chuckle, he looked up at her with a slight raise of his brow, the beginnings of a grin curving the corner of his mouth upwards as he rasped out a reply.
“I’m well aware of who you are, Parkinson.. And I can see Zabini lurking behind you as well, before you ask.. I‘m perfectly sane, thank you very much, just a little.. Overwhelmed..”
He nodded steadily, hoping that neither of the concerned faces in front of him had picked up on the uncertainty to his last few words and frowning to himself as the two exchanged a glance that no doubt meant that his hopes were unfounded. Averting his eyes from the pair of them instantly at such, he took to staring around the room instead of daring to glance back towards either of them.
It was then, and only then, that he noticed where he was: he was at home, actually at home, laying in a large and opulently carved four poster amidst the fine decor of one of the many guest suites that the Malfoy Manor had to offer. His eyes combed the room slowly, scanning over every inch of it, from a line of portraits on the far wall depicting several relatives that Draco had long since forgotten existed, to the dark grey hue of the lavish marble floor with the Malfoy family crest inscribed at its centre, on to the familiar curve of the twin silver serpentine handles set into the heavy oak doors. Smiling to himself as his eyes panned over and over the room, it took him a good few moments to be able to pull his gaze away from the collection of objects surrounding him, ultimately turning back to the expectant faces at his side and frowning slightly as the reality of the situation came flooding back to him.
“How long have I--”
“Eight months.”
Blaise’s voice sounded out, as familiarly deep as ever, cutting Draco’s words short and soon knocking the next planned sentence from his mouth with the dark skinned boy’s deathly serious expression.
“It‘s not quite eight yet.. Near a week under that actually, Blaise” Pansy cut in, blushing as soon as she had done so and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear before continuing in a slightly quieter tone “But, uh.. yeah.. Eight months near enough.”
“Eight mon--”
Words seemed to suddenly fail him, his features paling far beyond his usually pallid skintone as he tried to get his head round such a fact as eight months of non existence, staring fiercely towards his lap at the thought. Eight months.. That was thirty two weeks.. Two hundred and twenty four days.. Five thousand three hundred and seventy six hours.. He frowned deeply at the increasing numbers, shaking his head as though to stop multiplying, and briefly wondering where he had acquired the easy ability to do so. Tearing his gaze away from his steepled hands, he looked back towards the two of them, croaking out a few words once more.
“I don’t understand.. How--”
“Well..” Blaise’s voice interrupted again. “Even we weren’t sure at first.. We thought someone had managed to slip you the draught of living death or something.. But when the antidote for that did nothing at all, we had to start from scratch.. It’s taken weeks to sift through the libraries here, and the ones at Hogwarts as well.. But we found it in the end..” Pansy coughed into her hand tellingly and Blaise rolled his eyes. “Ok, fine.. Parkinson found it in the end.. But anyway, turns out it was an old spell, a really old spell; somewhat of an antiquity of sorts, in fact.. One called Ante Mortem..”
Blaise paused, looking down at his hands and frowning slightly to himself. The tall dark skinned boy looked worse than Draco could recall ever having seen him, it was as if he had not had a decent nights sleep in weeks, or perhaps months given his previous declaration on how long Draco had been.. detained..
At any rate, he was clearly exhausted and apparently finding some difficulty in telling the tale he had spent months living waist deep in. Shooting him a reassuring smile that seemed rather forced, Pansy nodded her head, wordlessly assuming the position of storyteller and sitting forward in her seat beside the bed a little. Draco had to bite back the urge to smirk at such; he could almost imagine a copy of ‘The tales of Beedle the Bard’ sitting in her lap, open at a bookmarked page as she leant forward to narrate the next chapter, her every action seeming rather amusingly reminiscent of a mother putting her child to bed.
Instead, his brow raised curiously, his mouth shut and determined to stay that way until he had a better idea as to what had gone on. As tempting as it was, now was hardly the time for screwing around.
“It’s.. Well, it’s supposed to be sort of a preface for death according to any literature we could find on it..” She paused, frowning slightly “Ancient Dark Wizards used to implement it on their victims while they were pending punishment.. In order to make sure that they wouldn’t live to tell the tale of escaping.. It’s-- It’s sort of an antechamber between the realm of the living and dead..”
She paused again, her frown having grown ten fold at the chuckle that had burst forth from Draco’s mouth alongside her final words. Her expression soon shifted, from nervous bewilderment to a sudden and fierce frustration, her wand in hand before Draco had even had a chance to note she was about to draw it from her pocket. He stared between the wand - that was now near touching the tip of his nose, causing his eyes to cross dizzyingly as he tried to focus on it - and Pansy’s furious expression; trying not to grin at such a sense of normality having resumed before he’d even got himself out of the bed. As he stared, Pansy’s eyes narrowed, her voice a low growl.
“Merlin help me, you’d better have a good explanation for--”
She stopped abruptly, turning her angered frown to one side of her where Blaise had already placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her wand arm, shaking his head at such an action and coaxing her hand back to her side. With a sigh of acceptance from Pansy, the two bedside figures turned back to a still mildly chuckling Draco, who waved a weak hand of dismissal, shaking his head slightly as the two non-Malfoy‘s stared on in quiet disbelief.
“Cheers, mate.. That just sounded absurdly similar to something I thought when I first came round in.. well.. wherever that place was..” he shrugged, feebly nodding towards them both again “Go on, I’m rapt with attention.”
He smirked, earning a matching look from Blaise for a brief moment before Pansy sighed, sounding rather frustrated as she interrupted the boys’ silent exchange in order to speak again.
“It’s dark magic, Draco! Very dark magic.. It’s not designed for longevity.. It’s merely designed to keep the person prisoner until their punishment has been decided upon. Most people die within hours of it being cast..”
Draco frowned curiously, sitting up a little straighter in the bed and tilting his head to one side, his look seeming to plead her to continue. Sighing once more, Pansy nodded, interpreting the look as meant and continuing in a slightly smaller voice.
“Well.. The way it works, is that you’re sort of bound, trapped within the curse until you’ve admitted defeat; until you’ve accepted your fate..”
“What do you mean ‘Accepted your fate?’”
He interrupted with a bewildered frown. Pansy sighed again.
“Well, what applies to you within the binds of the curse, also applies to your existence outside of it. If you give up -- become as lifeless as you feel, cry to the point of exhausting yourself emotionally, lay down and admit defeat, that sort of thing -- then it translates to your state outside; your physical state. Most people give in within hours, days at a push. But generally, people will readily face the fact that they are destined to perish rather than continue their suffering, and they do just that; perish due to the fact that they truly believed that their fate was as such…”
She hesitated again, looking towards him earnestly, a hint of fear clearly visible amidst the darkness of her eyes.
“No one knows how you survived this long, Draco.. Or..”
Blaise rapidly hushed her with a severe frown, his hand rocketing into the air in a bid for her silence; to which she readily complied, hanging her head slightly and pouting towards her lap.
“He needs to rest, Pans.. The other stuff can wait until--”
“Rest?!” Draco’s voice erupted again, his arms folded across his chest as he continued in the same indignant tone. “I don’t want to bloody well rest! I want to walk.. I want to eat, drink, sleep.. Anything but more fucking rest..”
“Don’t argue with me Malfoy, just trust me.” Blaise snapped rather viciously, shooting the boy a glare to which Draco looked utterly lost for words. “We bought you back, so just be grateful for a change and stop whining. It‘s not like we let you die..”
Draco was flummoxed; it was not often that Zabini dared take such a tone with him, even given the fact that the boys had been friends since long before they could remember, and perhaps, in many a way, his refusal to seethe over the blonde’s attempts was indeed due to such a matter holding true. The fact remained that it took something with a level of prominent severity for Blaise to adopt such a tone with him, and it had always been in Draco’s best interest to listen when he did. With a sigh of defeat, the blonde rolled his eyes.
“Fine.. Consider me bed-bound. Just do me a favour and bring me a drink.. A proper drink..”
Blaise smiled briefly, offering a nod and a slight smirk at Draco’s parting words.
“Good boy..” he grinned “One bottle of Ogdens best coming up.. Although I’m limiting you to a single glass. I don‘t fancy getting killed by your mother when she gets back to an alive but clearly drunk Heir to the Malfoy throne..”
Draco’s eyes instantly widened at the mention of Narcissa.. His mother.. The owner of the voice that had caused his throat to burn from trying to scream out after her. The lady whose opinions on pureblood supremacy he had repeated inside his head as though some insane mantra, whose childhood stories he had tried to recount as he lay in the bleakness of the world he had been trapped inside.
He had to see her, had to know she was alive, that her voice had not been a mere illusion of his dreamless state.
“Where is she? … My mother, I want to see her. My Father too.”
Blaise and Pansy both looked at him with matching indecipherable expressions before turning towards each other and exchanging a rather regretful glance, the look on both of their faces seeming far too out of place for Draco to discern what either one meant. Frowning at the exchange and positively hating - as ever - to be left out of the loop even if he wasn’t meant to be included just yet, he sighed frustratedly, his brow furrowing dramatically.
“I had rather hoped that you’d get the point of my previous statement without me having to add the word now into the equation…”
He scowled slightly towards them, his arms still folded harshly across his chest as the two figures before him exchanged another look before nodding, the pair of them heading out of the door - only Pansy pausing in the doorframe to shoot Draco what he was sure was supposed to be a reassuring smile - and leaving him alone in the stillness of the room once more.
---
---
It was not long until the hurried click of Narcissa’s high heeled shoes rang out along the hallway leading towards the guest suite, sidetracking Draco’s attention from the vial he had been twirling in between his fingers and causing his eyes to sweep towards the door with an expectant gaze. As if on cue, the handle clicked upwards and the door swung open, colliding with the wall beside it with a loud bang that the lady of the Manor seemed to either not notice, or not care about whatsoever.
“Oh, my boy!” She near shrieked, hurrying across the room throwing herself atop the bed sheets; flinging her arms around Draco’s neck, burying her head tightly in his shoulder and sobbing delightedly into it between mutters. “My darling boy!”
His eyes had widened at such a display and he found himself quite lost for both words and action for a moment. Throughout his mothers coddling over the years - her constant efforts to put Draco in Lucius’ good books when he had done wrong, her dry kisses on the cheek before he left to board the Hogwarts Express, and her smiling terms of endearment as she would push her son’s hair from his face, commenting on how he was as handsome as his father had been at such an age - he had never seen her being so outwardly emotional and had certainly never been held so tightly, nor fiercely by the woman who was now near threatening to crush his bones under her vice like grip of an embrace. As a Malfoy, it was considered rather unbecoming to show such weakness as positive emotion; his father’s constant and ever stoic refrain was enough to solidify such a fact, and Draco after all, was nothing if not his Father’s son, and therefore rather taken aback by such a motion.
Wrapping his arms around his mother finally and gripping her fiercely for a moment before loosening his hold, his mind suddenly raced back through his previous thoughts until he hit upon one key mention; his Father. Leaning his head over the top of his mothers shoulder and peering around the room for a moment, he soon pushed her slightly away from him, staring her in the eye as his voice sounded out quietly, almost desperately.
“W--Where’s Father?”
Narcissa’s already waxen face paled even more so than usual, her eyes softening and seeming to brim with tears at such a mention. Draco frowned, his heart sinking in his chest as he slumped down a little further in the bed; as much as he hated to even fathom such a thought, he knew the answer to his query without Narcissa having to say a single word.
Lucius Malfoy, was dead.