(no subject)
I have loads and loads of comments to reply to, not to mention some long emails from my beloved flist, lots of internet research to do and about 15 minutes computer time.
Anyway, procrastinating like an absolute pro, I thought I would instead update with the prologue of The Human Abstract just to see if you guys like it. It's not going anywhere else yet so please don't archive this version. This is just for LJ.
I'm actually a bit worried about this story as I have invested SO much into it and I really really hope that it's ok. Lend me your thoughts, if you will, and they will be much appreciated.
So, exactly one year to the day after its conception, here's the THA prologue...
Title: The Human Abstract
Pairing: Will be H/D
Rating: Will be R but I'm not sure about this chapter
Summary: A novel-length story in which values, sexuality and relationships are questioned.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.”
-- The Human Abstract by William Blake
Draco Malfoy leaned his head back into the glimmering bars of patchy sunlight that drifted lazily through the French windows into the palatial lounge in which he was reclining. It glanced off his silver-blond hair, making it shine brightly, and filled the room with a warmth that brought beads of condensation trickling down the glass of ice-water he held in his hand. The heat and languor of the day combined to bring about an air of anticipation. He felt almost as if a storm was to break over the suffocating stillness; the air outside was too saturated with moisture and torpor for this moment to last and yet it drifted by for what seemed like hours.
A quiet voice murmured softly in his ear, “Open your eyes.” It was an angelic sound calling Draco back from the brink of a dream but the smooth effect of it was negated somewhat by the subsequent mutter of, “you lazy pillock.” Draco looked up to see his oldest friend leaning over him, her arresting face creased with amusement and her long dark hair trailing over her shoulder.
“Lexy!” Draco exclaimed, then yawned to clear his head of its lethargy. “I was wondering when you were coming.”
“I’m sorry I’m late, the floo network was down at work all morning so I couldn’t get away.” Alexia sat down on the couch opposite Draco and poured herself a drink from the pitcher on the glass coffee table. She could have been anywhere between nineteen and twenty-nine, her face, whilst lacking the qualities of traditional beauty, appeared almost ageless. “I see you managed to find the right spell to get in.” She smiled. Draco’s supreme comfort might have suggested otherwise, but this was her house and she had invited him as a guest to spend the afternoon with her before he went back to school. Despite almost eight years difference in their ages, Alexia Greaves and Draco Malfoy had spent their whole lives within three miles of each other and were closer than many siblings could boast.
Draco loved her, in his own way, as a brother might love a sister, and her presence had been a comfort to him, providing a constancy that he much needed and a female perspective to check his impolitic activities and teach him respect. In the days of Draco’s childhood he had watched Alexia battle adolescence and turn into a laughing young woman for whom his admiration had only increased. She was a strangely oxymoronic blend of propriety and rebellion with a distinct faith in the power of consanguinity that had disappointed her in the past and yet still she persevered. She was of a relatively young, purely magical lineage that held an estate neighbouring the Malfoys, and both her mother and father joined Lucius and Narcissa in their beliefs about the negative influence of Muggles on wizarding folk.
“I never get to see you any more,” Draco chided, nudging her with his foot. “You’re always working.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she replied. “I’ll take you to Paris in the Christmas holidays though, I promise. Anyway, you’re going back to Hogwarts tomorrow.”
“Don’t remind me,” Draco groaned.
“Not looking forward to it?” Alexia sighed. “I’d love to see the place again, they were the happiest years of my life.” She looked slightly wistful as she contemplated days that were maybe happier, and more carefree. Draco was rather inclined to dismiss his school as a waste of time. Alexia had been a Ravenclaw and therefore not necessarily subjected to the prejudices harboured against Slytherin students. As much as Draco took pride in descending from a lineage full of Salazar’s favourites, he sometimes wished for an anonymity that Hogwarts was ill-equipped to afford.
“It’s so stressful.” Draco waved one aristocratic hand around melodramatically. “All the teachers are harping on about the importance of NEWTs for our futures, and dropping would-be subtle hints about suitable careers for us. That hag McGonagall actually told me at the end of last term that I’d make an excellent Professor of Muggle Studies if I didn’t lack the necessary people skills.”
“Oh the horror.” Alexia gazed at him amusedly. “I wonder where she got that from.” Draco glowered. “Anyway,” she went on, “you’re only sixteen, you’re not taking your NEWTs until next year.”
“I know,” Draco replied, “but that hasn’t stopped them piling on the pressure. I’m doing Advanced Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration and Arithmancy.”
Alexia raised her pointed eyebrows at this statement. “So, taking it easy then?”
“What can I say?” Draco shrugged. “I have ambitions.” His teachers had advised against taking a combination of such intellectually taxing courses at higher level which, of course, had been incentive enough in Draco’s mind to do so.
“I dread to consider any ambitions of yours that go beyond owning those Armani shoes you were obsessing over last week.” Alexia popped a grape from a bowl into her mouth and threw one to Draco.
“I’ll have you know that I have wide and varied ambitions that are not all sartorially based,” Draco said, mock-huffily. “For instance, by the time I am thirty I want to have solved Flamel’s Alchemical Riddles, learnt what makes Fizzing Whizzbees fizz, met a leprechaun, hit Harry Potter in the face and told Jon Bon Jovi what I really think of his hairstyle.”
“Which would be?” Alexia inquired delicately.
“That whatever wax he uses is just queer in a jar,” Draco replied at once. “Good music, though,” he added, looking thoughtful. Alexia giggled, suddenly looking much younger, a consequence of imposing Draco’s humour on her.
“I can see that Arithmancy is going to be of great importance to that,” she said.
“Of course.” Draco grinned. “You haven’t told me what you’re doing at work,” he said curiously. “You never talk about it.” The little Draco knew of Alexia’s profession extended to the fact that she did something involving International Magical Communications and worked closely with offices at the French Ministry and no amount of curiosity on his part seemed to elucidate this. Draco could remember when she had entered the position, three years ago, wanting to put her linguistic skills to use somewhere other than in McDonald’s McWizard. He could remember the lancing excitement that had radiated from her in waves when she began her job and had watched with a certain fascination the way her enthusiasm had faded. It had faded, or rather she had closed off every avenue connecting her work life with her private life and for the first time ever, had shut Draco from a part of herself. This was something that he quite resented, feeling with all the strength possessed by only children that to love someone meant that you were deserving of a share in every aspect of their life.
“Oh, it’s not interesting.” Alexia waved her hand dismissively. There was a very brief silence that nevertheless seemed to shatter before Alexia quirked her lips at him. “I’d much rather hear about you wanting to hit Harry Potter in the face,” she said with all the sincerity and genuine interest that Draco was accustomed to. Something inside him, though, was nagging at the back of his skull. Alexia’s indifferent manner towards her work was unchanging from month to month, almost as if she never wanted to talk about it, and her ready boredom with it was always far too prompt for Draco’s liking. He hated to think that she was keeping things from him but sometimes he wondered whether there was something she hadn’t told him.
“Well he’s always trying to get under my skin,” Draco complained, feeling that a change of subject might not be the worst thing in the world. His nose scrunched up like a child’s in the way it always did when talk turned to Potter and other vague irritants.
“As you’ve said,” Alexia smiled, “a thousand times. You should really stop getting at him.”
“But he’s just such a pain in the arse,” Draco said in annoyance, before lapsing into incoherent grumbling. The only intelligible words that could be gleaned were ‘tosser’, ‘broom-jockey’ and ‘big hairy torture instruments of doom.’ In Draco’s head, though, it all made perfect sense and fully articulate and intelligible sentences were not required to make his point. It was an efficiency of language, really.
“Uh-huh.” Alexia nodded sympathetically. “Because that made so much sense.” She shifted over to sit next to him and threw one comforting arm around his shoulders. Draco leaned into her instinctively, relishing the sisterly contact. Being an only child, along with cultivating a certain selfishness and disregard for other people’s property, had imbued Draco with an edge of loneliness. His parents were often away and it was one reason that he cherished Alexia’s company so much; she had always been there to break the tedium and solitude, a quick floo away. Draco couldn’t imagine not having her around. Now she was away quite often, and so Draco treasured these precious hours, knowing that their time together could only decrease with the loss of his childhood and the onset of their years.
Somewhere outside, the heat was ringing against massing dark clouds as a storm prepared to break itself upon the rolling Wiltshire hills. Their green was slowly fading, purged of colour as the reflective barrier of clouds bled a misty grey into their fabric, sapping the life from the admirable vistas. The thundering immobility was about to explode in what promised to be an almighty storm. Inside, however, a different commotion sprang up all of a sudden in the form of a piercing alarm that rang through the house, it’s shrill wail resonating painfully in Draco’s ears.
“What the hell is that?” he shouted over it, throwing his hands to shield his ears and looking at Alexia in confusion, all peace shattered. She, however, had gone rigid with fear and quickly withdrawn her arm from around Draco, the fingers of which were shaking slightly. “What’s going on?” Draco asked, feeling a cold snap of worry cling uncomfortably around his chest. Alexia’s face had paled and she reached at once for her wand, looking around wildly.
“Oh Merlin,” she breathed and, placing one hand firmly on Draco’s chest, propelled him backwards towards the edge of the room. He winced as he knocked into a Corinthian column, the cold stone sending shivers up his spine nearly as much as the sight of Alexia almost crippled by fear. “Stay back,” she said quickly, her eyes betraying her worry as they flashed desperately from window to window, sliding over Draco as though he were something inanimate, to be protected and sheltered. Useless to her.
“What’s happening?” Draco asked, his mouth hanging open, and not realising that all his questions were currently going unanswered. His heart was thudding painfully in his chest and the undulating screams of the magical alarm were making his ears hurt. He had never seen Alexia look so worried and he wondered frantically what this was all in aid of. He had suspicions of course, horrible, dark snatches of thought that tormented his mind like the frenzied bites of gnats, made worse by his inability to ignore them.
“Try to open the doors!” she called over to him and, mind numb with shock, Draco pressed down on the handles of the French windows which were locked tight.
“Alohomora,” he said, pointing his wand at the catch, but it was to no avail. His body seemed to be acting of its own accord, with no input from his brain.
“Damn.” Alexia tried the other doors but it was no good, they were sealed in. Draco realized this at the same moment she did and felt a keen, painful realization that was abrupt as a punch in the stomach. Something was coming for them. His head pounding with the shrillness of the noise, Draco ran towards his friend and grabbed her by the shoulders as if she were some wild bird.
“What is this?” he asked. “Tell me what’s going on!” Her eyes were glancing at the windows as if expecting to see somebody through them and Draco could feel her trembling under his hands. He let go of her at once but she didn’t move.
“I think I’m in danger,” she managed to whisper through bitten and bloody lips, and Draco had to strain to hear her over the noise. Danger.
“Why?” he asked at once, a fresh wave of fear kicking in. He had never seen Alexia look like this before, she was strong and capable and didn’t go to pieces like this. There was something terrible waiting, just on the periphery of their sight and their emotions; it was a sickening fear that threatened to overcome them, and something more tangible, something with hands and spells and a form. Outside, the first bullet-drops of rain were lashing against the windows and the sky that was once laced with sunlight was now as grey as slate and sharper than a knife in its jagged gashes of cloud. The lights in the room all flickered out at once.
“Lumos!” Draco and Alexia cried, lighting the tips of their wands and casting the silver light across the marble floor.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Alexia said, clinging to Draco. “Do you hear me?”
Draco, panicky with confusion, nodded mutely, unable to speak. His eyes were wide as he glanced around the room, taking in everything, searching for a weak corner, a route out of this shrill madness. His eyes settled on the engraved marble mantelpiece.
“What about the fireplace?” he asked hoarsely. Alexia’s face lit up.
“Of course!” she exclaimed and they moved across the room, their feet tapping with the peals of the alarm in horrible synchronicity. A fork of lightning lit the sky outside and they both stopped, frozen with horror. Illuminated by the lightning, and standing now in the field of their wand light, several black, hooded shapes were skulking in front of the fireplace. Draco whirled around, there were some more behind them, they were surrounded. Thunder crashed deafeningly and the piercing cry of the alarm cut out. A ringing silence prevailed, broken only by Draco’s ragged breathing and the rustle of black material as the figures immediately in front of them began to step forward. Alexia moved protectively in front of Draco, an act that elicited a rumble of throaty laughter from the eleven or so shapes dotted around the room.
“We are not here for the Malfoy child,” came a voice that some part of Draco recognized from some party or another. Then, of course, that voice hadn’t been hidden behind a mask. “He is no traitor.”
“Traitor?” Draco stammered, unable to register any more surprise and settling for blind disbelief. “Lexy? What’s happening?” Alexia grasped his hand painfully tightly and did not let go but neither did she look at him once. Her hand was small in his and slick from sweat.
“Dolohov,” she spat, suddenly angry. “Azkaban not to your liking?” Antonin Dolohov, the Death Eater with the blood of the fabled Aurors Gideon and Fabian Prewitt on his hands, stepped closer, growling slightly.
“Do not talk to me, wretch!” He sprang forward and backhanded Alexia across the face. Draco yelped with surprise and caught her in his arms as she fell backwards, her wand skittering out of her hands. He stood in front of her and faced Dolohov, whose masked demeanour was made more eerie by the lightning that crashed outside the window.
“What do you mean ‘traitor’?” Draco asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Expelliarmus!” A voice from behind Draco effectively disarmed him and his wand flew to join Alexia’s several metres away.
“My apologies, young Master Malfoy.” Draco recognised the voice to belong to another Death Eater, the father of Theodore Nott, one of Draco‘s school friends. “Your loyalty is not in question, this is merely a precaution.” Draco whipped around, finding them surrounded by black-mantled figures, all of whom had withdrawn their wands and were pointing them at Alexia.
“Move aside, Draco,” Dolohov said. “This is not your concern.”
“Tell me what is going on!” Draco demanded. Alexia’s eyes were shining with tears and a bloody smudge decorated her cheek.
“Your friend is a traitor, Master Malfoy,” Nott said calmly.
“What?” Draco asked. “No, she isn’t! Tell them, Lexy, you’re not.” She looked him straight in the eyes and he saw a great pain fill hers as well as a plea for his forgiveness. Suddenly Draco knew what it was she had been keeping from him. “You’re a spy?” he asked, incredulous.
“That’s right!” Dolohov strode forward again and pushed the stunned Draco aside into another Death Eater. He grabbed Alexia by the hair and dragged her forward, even though she kicked and bit and clawed at him in a futile attempt to escape.
“Let her go!” Draco cried, hating to see her this way. “Please don’t!”
“You would suggest we allow this treachery?” Dolohov feigned horror. “Do you wish to share her fate, Draco?” Draco was torn between an innate regard for self-preservation and an overwhelming desire to save his friend.
“I…just…please,” he stammered, not knowing what to say.
“This piece of filth,” spat an unknown Death Eater from across the circle, “has been passing information to the French Aurors about the factions in Angers, and the Parisian circles for over a year.” The Death Eaters were slowly, imperceptibly closing in on Alexia, who had scrambled to her feet and was eyeing them all with a wild terror like some caged animal.
“She has foiled some of the most important French missions to date,” said another.
“Her perfidy knows no bounds. She is ungrateful for the bounty bestowed upon her by Our Lord,” said Crabbe, “and she deliberately works to bring about his downfall.”
“Death is too good for you,” Dolohov growled and threw Alexia to the floor. “Crucio!” he yelled and Draco’s screams mingled with Alexia’s as she writhed and groaned in abject agony. Draco struggled violently against the cold, strong arms that were binding him. All he could think about was how much pain his friend was in and the prickling excitement of the Death Eaters around him was mounting like a palpable force.
After what seemed like hours they lifted the curse and Alexia slumped brokenly to the floor, her lips tinged blue and her muscles spasming uncontrollably. She whimpered softly, her eyes glazed over and her hands trembling. Draco was shaking too, clutched by some faceless Death Eater he was prevented from reaching her and was forced to watch the entire affair play itself before his helpless eyes.
“What are you going to do to me?” Alexia asked with a voice that was cracked and wavering. “Are you going to take me to your slavering skeleton of a master?” She cried out in pain as an incensed Death Eater kicked her unceremoniously in the stomach.
“How dare you?” he shouted, kicking her again. “Such treason!” He was pulled back into rank, leaving Alexia moaning with pain on the floor.
“Oh no,” Dolohov said softly, “you’re not going to the Dark Lord. He has requested you be dealt with here, and we have found a fitting end for you indeed. Draco,” Dolohov turned to the quivering Malfoy who was white with terror, “see what happens to traitors. Consider it part of your training.”
With those words he raised his wand towards the far door and spelled it open. At once and without warning, a creeping chill enveloped the room in its icy embrace. It was as though somebody had opened the door to an arctic wind and it had spread throughout the room, permeating every corner with its bitterness. The pitcher of water on the table began to slowly crystallize into ice and Draco’s breath misted in front of his face.
That feeling of a stony dread, as though he was never going to be happy again, that intense chill, that flash of pain as he relived the worst moments of his life. It could only mean one thing; they had brought a Dementor.
It manifested itself in the doorway as a black shape that glided forward through the ranks of Death Eaters to stand in front of Alexia who was now screaming for mercy. Draco struggled again in vain as he heard it draw rattling breaths from beneath its hood and smelt the foul stench of decay that erupted from its slimy, rotting skin.
“No!” Draco yelled, his nerves set alight with horror. “No! You can’t!” He knew that Alexia would not leave this room with her soul intact. He knew this, and he was terrified for her.
“Traitors deserve this,” Dolohov was saying, a gleam of malice in his obsidian eyes. “You deserve this, Alexia Greaves.” Her protestations were growing more feeble as an incredible weakness overtook her and she slumped to the floor. The Dementor peeled back its hood to reveal the gaping eye-sockets over which were stretched foul and scabbed skin. Some of the Death Eaters were shifting uneasily but others looked hungrily excited. The noise from the storm had been distinguished, the world stilled to encompass solely this moment, painted with the sounds of silence and the colours of revulsion.
“No!” Draco screamed again, breaking the quiet. “Lexy!”
“Quiet, Malfoy!” Dolohov snapped and watched with undisguised fascination as the Dementor lowered itself to the crying woman and lifted her face to his. This was the deep breath before the plunge and Draco was frozen and could not look away. Suddenly it let out a shuddering sigh and sucked at her mouth, her body going rigid in its hands, her veins protruding from beneath her skin, glowing blue, draining her body. It was horrific to watch, the sight and sounds of a soul being lost to darkness, being devoured by some creature of filth and dread. The was a zeal about it, an eagerness in the way it clung to her beautiful skin, leaving smears of putrid flesh over her arms, gripping her wrists so hard that Draco heard the bones snap, sucking at her soul with an indescribable series of gasping noises.
And then it was over.
It might have hurt, no-one knew for sure. It was a more terrible thing to happen to a human being than any other form of punishment for the simple reason that it went against one fundamental truth: human beings are essentially free. It took years of slow torture and aching despair at death’s door to condition a soul, to fashion it into something else, to twist and pervert it until it was unrecognisable. Even the lowliest people born into a serfdom they could not escape had the freedom of conscience, the freedom of thought, to let their minds roam some happier plane and leave their wretched bodies for a few sweet moments. When a soul was inhaled by a Dementor, it became trapped, a caged thing, for eternity. The body would rot and the mind would be confined by constraints of unadulterated despair until the soul itself was broken and then true destruction of a human being would be complete.
A shell of a human lay sprawled now across the floor as the Dementor straightened up, its lusts slaked for the present. Dolohov banished it with a further wave of his wand and slowly a warmth began to return to the room but not to Draco, who was colder than he had ever been in his life. Numbly, he felt himself being released and he fell down at once and crawled over to where Alexia lay, her eyes glazed, her chest rising and falling with mockeries of breaths. He clutched at her hand, tears spilling from his eyes, and found it as clammy as though she were dead; her fate was much crueller, though, to exist as a hollow thing of no worth until her natural years were spent. Her soul was lost forever, irretrievable. Draco was aware of nothing except the feeling of her hand in his.
“She’s gone, Malfoy,” Dolohov said harshly. “Leave her be.” But Draco couldn’t. He wouldn’t let go, this was his friend, he loved her, she might come back. His grief was overwhelming as he held Alexia in his arms, clutching her to his body as though she would respond and pull him into her embrace and tell him that everything would be alright. She was blurry now from tears, her long black hair just a strange line of colour through the distortion of Draco’s eyes.
“Come, Malfoy!” Dolohov shouted angrily and Draco was aware of hands dragging him backwards, away from Alexia’s body. He tried to protest, to tell them that he had to stay with her, but his voice had been silenced. They had done this to her because she was part of the resistance. She was so beautiful and they had absolutely destroyed her. They picked him up as though he was nothing more than a child and somebody carried him into the fireplace. The last thing he saw as emerald flames licked around him was the sight of his beloved Alexia lying on the cold floor, her open eyes unseeing, her hands reaching for anything to pull her back from this abyss. Draco let the grief swamp him.
The next thing he knew, Nott was carrying him out of the fireplace of his father’s study. Draco was completely limp in his arms and it was with a vague blurriness that he registered his father’s open-mouthed surprise.
“What happened?” Lucius asked urgently, getting up from his desk and rushing to take Draco in his arms and lay him on a leather settee.
“He was there when the Dementor took care of Miss Greaves,” Nott was saying in an undertone. Lucius loosened Draco’s collar and felt his pulse. “It affected him very badly.”
“Of course it did, you fool, she was his oldest friend!” Lucius admonished Nott who stood, wringing his hands beside the fireplace. “He shouldn’t have been there,” he muttered. “Draco,” he said softly, bending over his son, “are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Draco murmured automatically, trying to sit up and finding himself very weak from shock and horror.
“You’re so cold,” Lucius said worriedly, smoothing back Draco’s hair and tilting his wand to his son’s forehead. He muttered something and Draco immediately felt a rush of warmth fill him and he started to feel a little better. He knew he must look awful, with tear tracks running down his face and his hands shaking like leaves.
“Fetch Narcissa,” Lucius growled at Nott, who hurried off at once. Draco managed to sit up, even though he felt as if he was about to break in two. There was a fragility to him at that moment that he hated. It was of mind as well as body and his thoughts were so bleak that he thought he would never be free of them.
“Are you alright?” Lucius asked again and Draco nodded, although the opposite was plainly true.
“Lexy-” Draco said, his voice hitching, “she’s, she’s-” He couldn’t continue. It was just too hard. His heart was still beating unnaturally fast and his breaths were becoming sharp and erratic as they grated against his lungs, the oxygen feeling rather like a poison that he knew he needed.
“I know,” Lucius breathed, “I’m so sorry, Draco.”
“I watched,” Draco said numbly. “I saw the whole thing.” He looked up just in time to see the troubled expression on Lucius’s face intensify with this declaration. He felt a sudden irrational surge of anger towards his father, who stood their so concerned and uneasy. He wanted to lash out at him and at the world for being so set in the past, when murder in the name of justice, whosever justice it should be, was ok.
“You shouldn’t have.” Lucius looked worried.
“I watched as that thing- devoured her!” Draco’s voice rose, full of anger and grief. He could see it replaying in front of his eyes, that exact moment when Alexia had gone limp and Draco had known that he would never talk to her again. They would never go to Paris together like she had promised, she would never know what results he got for his NEWTs or what made Fizzing Whizzbees fizz. She would never be aware of anything ever again.
That’s when it hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.
Draco leaned forward and vomited heavily.
Lucius made a soothing sound and the door slammed open loudly to reveal Narcissa rushing in, a sylph of a woman with a contrite Nott following in her wake.
“Oh my God!” she cried, swooping down on Draco. “Are you alright? What happened?”
“He witnessed Alexia’s punishment,” Lucius said, taking his wife’s manicured hand comfortingly.
“What did they do to her?” Narcissa suddenly paled further, looking up at her husband with fear in her eyes. “Draco, what did you see happen?”
“They gave her the Kiss,” Draco mumbled. “I had to watch, Dolohov made me watch.”
“Is this true?” Lucius demanded of Nott who nodded.
“Dolohov wanted to make sure Draco saw what happens to traitors,” he said.
“Bastard!” Lucius exclaimed, standing up and kicking over his snake-topped cane with fury. “How dare he?”
Draco was in shock, rendered immovable. He could see nothing but rotting flesh, could hear nothing but those rattling sighs, could feel nothing but Alexia’s hand in his. He saw her try to protect him, he saw her laughing, he saw her face delighted by sunlight. He saw her lying down, her body colder than the marble of her bed. He buried his face in his mother’s shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” she was saying. “Believe me, Draco, I am so sorry you had to see that.”
Narcissa was as thin as a rapier but with a sinewy strength about her that held Draco fast, as if never intending to let him go. Alexia had been a close friend of Draco’s for so long that she had become like a second child to both Lucius and Narcissa and it was with a racking grief that this news was absorbed.
“Did you know?” Draco asked suddenly, pulling back and surveying his parents suspiciously. “Did you know that this was going to happen to her?” Their glance at each other confirmed his fears and he stood up hurriedly, further sickened. “You knew!” he exclaimed. “How could you let them do that to her?”
“We knew she was a spy for the Light side,” Lucius said. “We didn’t know what the Dark Lord planned for her.”
“Why didn’t you warn her?” Draco asked. “Why did you just let her be destroyed like that?”
“If we had said anything then we would have gone the same way,” Narcissa placated. “It would have been treachery.”
“Believe us, Draco, when we say that we never wished it upon her,” Lucius said, his voice catching in his throat in a way that Draco had never heard before in his father. “She was like a daughter to us, remember?”
“She’s gone now, it’s too late,” Draco said, moving towards the door, still feeling nauseous by the whole affair and filled with contempt for the absent malice that they called ‘Lord’.
“Draco,” Narcissa went to follow him but he flinched from her touch and turned around.
“Please just leave me alone,” he said, and walked out of the door.
By morning, Alexia would be shut away where no-one would find her, and there she would simply exist until her death, devoid of a soul.
Draco would never forget her.
“Draco!” His father was coming after him. Draco stopped but didn’t turn around. “Look,” Lucius said, “I know how difficult that must have been for you to watch.”
“Really?” Draco rubbed his eyes. “You knew, father. You knew that this was going to happen, and you didn’t even try to save her!”
“I’m sorry.” Lucius laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. “You should never have seen that, but Draco, listen to me, I know you’re grieving but you cannot let your anger get the best of you.”
“What do you mean?” Draco turned around at once. His father’s ice-blue eyes, so like his own, were filled with a paternal concern, an emotion that many believed Lucius Malfoy incapable of. Draco knew differently, he knew that his father held him in high esteem, and as an only child, Draco received a lot of affection and attention that went unnoticed by those ready to condemn all Malfoys together.
“I mean,” Lucius looked troubled, “that if you were to speak about this incident and let slip what you felt for Alexia, then you might place yourself in danger. I’m only thinking of you.”
“Don’t worry, father,” Draco said, looking away, unable to meet his father’s eyes. “I will behave as befits a Malfoy, and as somebody who will one day become like those men who destroyed someone I loved.” He knew the uncharacteristic coldness in his voice was chilling his father, but he didn’t care.
“I’m just saying that I don’t think it would be wise to talk about this to anyone,” Lucius said, an edge to his voice that was inflected in the hope of jarring some sense into Draco. “If the Dark Lord was to hear of any insubordination, even verbal, then you would be punished.”
“Why didn’t you take part in this afternoon’s activities, father?” Draco asked suddenly. “Where were you?”
“Draco,” Lucius said warningly.
“Oh I’m genuinely curious,” Draco said, turning round again. Lucius sighed.
“You always were rash with your words,” he murmured under his breath. “Dolohov requested permission to deal with Alexia and it was he that chose those who would accompany him. Dolohov has little love for any Malfoy, and has envied my position in the ranks for as long as I remember. I’m glad I wasn’t there, though.”
“Lucky you.” Draco continued his way upstairs.
“Take my advice!” Lucius called after him. “Best not talk of this matter to anyone, you know what our Lord’s policies are, you must accept them.”
Draco paused before moving on.
Yes he knew of Voldemort’s glorious policies, and the danger he would be in if some of his fellow classmates overheard a diatribe about this injustice. He was well practiced in the art of stoicism, and his crystalline façade would not falter at school, he would be the same Draco Malfoy to his friends and enemies alike. But something inside him would have changed irreversibly, and that same delight and passion for his ideals would have charred.
Draco had been brought up knowing that one day he would take his parents’ sides, his Lord’s Mark and help to accomplish the cause that Voldemort had established. He grew up hating ‘Mudbloods’ because he had been taught that they were the reason for everything that went wrong with the wizarding race, they diluted the purity of magic and of blood.
His ideals had been firmly stamped on his chest for as long as he could remember and to have them suddenly questioned was like having the floor yawn beneath him and swallow him whole. It was like falling through some abyss, knowing that he would never hit the bottom because there lay the necessity to change the way he thought and acted and that was a frightening concept. In one fateful afternoon, everything had been called into question and he found himself silently engaging in a moral debate that led inevitably to the acidic sense of guilt, loss and anger that had come with the loss of his friend for her subversion. If Voldemort was going to be defeated one day, Alexia’s destruction would have been for nothing, but Draco knew that she was already one more wasted life and that thought haunted him like nothing else could.
Imbued with a new bitterness and contempt for the world, this school year would prove very interesting for him indeed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Am off partying tonight so expect hungover posts for the next couple of days or absolutely nothing as I hide from light and food underneath my bed and befriend the dust bunnies. What the hell is a dust bunny?
I hope everyone across the world has a fantastic new year. You all deserve it.
Anyway, procrastinating like an absolute pro, I thought I would instead update with the prologue of The Human Abstract just to see if you guys like it. It's not going anywhere else yet so please don't archive this version. This is just for LJ.
I'm actually a bit worried about this story as I have invested SO much into it and I really really hope that it's ok. Lend me your thoughts, if you will, and they will be much appreciated.
So, exactly one year to the day after its conception, here's the THA prologue...
Title: The Human Abstract
Pairing: Will be H/D
Rating: Will be R but I'm not sure about this chapter
Summary: A novel-length story in which values, sexuality and relationships are questioned.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.”
-- The Human Abstract by William Blake
Draco Malfoy leaned his head back into the glimmering bars of patchy sunlight that drifted lazily through the French windows into the palatial lounge in which he was reclining. It glanced off his silver-blond hair, making it shine brightly, and filled the room with a warmth that brought beads of condensation trickling down the glass of ice-water he held in his hand. The heat and languor of the day combined to bring about an air of anticipation. He felt almost as if a storm was to break over the suffocating stillness; the air outside was too saturated with moisture and torpor for this moment to last and yet it drifted by for what seemed like hours.
A quiet voice murmured softly in his ear, “Open your eyes.” It was an angelic sound calling Draco back from the brink of a dream but the smooth effect of it was negated somewhat by the subsequent mutter of, “you lazy pillock.” Draco looked up to see his oldest friend leaning over him, her arresting face creased with amusement and her long dark hair trailing over her shoulder.
“Lexy!” Draco exclaimed, then yawned to clear his head of its lethargy. “I was wondering when you were coming.”
“I’m sorry I’m late, the floo network was down at work all morning so I couldn’t get away.” Alexia sat down on the couch opposite Draco and poured herself a drink from the pitcher on the glass coffee table. She could have been anywhere between nineteen and twenty-nine, her face, whilst lacking the qualities of traditional beauty, appeared almost ageless. “I see you managed to find the right spell to get in.” She smiled. Draco’s supreme comfort might have suggested otherwise, but this was her house and she had invited him as a guest to spend the afternoon with her before he went back to school. Despite almost eight years difference in their ages, Alexia Greaves and Draco Malfoy had spent their whole lives within three miles of each other and were closer than many siblings could boast.
Draco loved her, in his own way, as a brother might love a sister, and her presence had been a comfort to him, providing a constancy that he much needed and a female perspective to check his impolitic activities and teach him respect. In the days of Draco’s childhood he had watched Alexia battle adolescence and turn into a laughing young woman for whom his admiration had only increased. She was a strangely oxymoronic blend of propriety and rebellion with a distinct faith in the power of consanguinity that had disappointed her in the past and yet still she persevered. She was of a relatively young, purely magical lineage that held an estate neighbouring the Malfoys, and both her mother and father joined Lucius and Narcissa in their beliefs about the negative influence of Muggles on wizarding folk.
“I never get to see you any more,” Draco chided, nudging her with his foot. “You’re always working.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she replied. “I’ll take you to Paris in the Christmas holidays though, I promise. Anyway, you’re going back to Hogwarts tomorrow.”
“Don’t remind me,” Draco groaned.
“Not looking forward to it?” Alexia sighed. “I’d love to see the place again, they were the happiest years of my life.” She looked slightly wistful as she contemplated days that were maybe happier, and more carefree. Draco was rather inclined to dismiss his school as a waste of time. Alexia had been a Ravenclaw and therefore not necessarily subjected to the prejudices harboured against Slytherin students. As much as Draco took pride in descending from a lineage full of Salazar’s favourites, he sometimes wished for an anonymity that Hogwarts was ill-equipped to afford.
“It’s so stressful.” Draco waved one aristocratic hand around melodramatically. “All the teachers are harping on about the importance of NEWTs for our futures, and dropping would-be subtle hints about suitable careers for us. That hag McGonagall actually told me at the end of last term that I’d make an excellent Professor of Muggle Studies if I didn’t lack the necessary people skills.”
“Oh the horror.” Alexia gazed at him amusedly. “I wonder where she got that from.” Draco glowered. “Anyway,” she went on, “you’re only sixteen, you’re not taking your NEWTs until next year.”
“I know,” Draco replied, “but that hasn’t stopped them piling on the pressure. I’m doing Advanced Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration and Arithmancy.”
Alexia raised her pointed eyebrows at this statement. “So, taking it easy then?”
“What can I say?” Draco shrugged. “I have ambitions.” His teachers had advised against taking a combination of such intellectually taxing courses at higher level which, of course, had been incentive enough in Draco’s mind to do so.
“I dread to consider any ambitions of yours that go beyond owning those Armani shoes you were obsessing over last week.” Alexia popped a grape from a bowl into her mouth and threw one to Draco.
“I’ll have you know that I have wide and varied ambitions that are not all sartorially based,” Draco said, mock-huffily. “For instance, by the time I am thirty I want to have solved Flamel’s Alchemical Riddles, learnt what makes Fizzing Whizzbees fizz, met a leprechaun, hit Harry Potter in the face and told Jon Bon Jovi what I really think of his hairstyle.”
“Which would be?” Alexia inquired delicately.
“That whatever wax he uses is just queer in a jar,” Draco replied at once. “Good music, though,” he added, looking thoughtful. Alexia giggled, suddenly looking much younger, a consequence of imposing Draco’s humour on her.
“I can see that Arithmancy is going to be of great importance to that,” she said.
“Of course.” Draco grinned. “You haven’t told me what you’re doing at work,” he said curiously. “You never talk about it.” The little Draco knew of Alexia’s profession extended to the fact that she did something involving International Magical Communications and worked closely with offices at the French Ministry and no amount of curiosity on his part seemed to elucidate this. Draco could remember when she had entered the position, three years ago, wanting to put her linguistic skills to use somewhere other than in McDonald’s McWizard. He could remember the lancing excitement that had radiated from her in waves when she began her job and had watched with a certain fascination the way her enthusiasm had faded. It had faded, or rather she had closed off every avenue connecting her work life with her private life and for the first time ever, had shut Draco from a part of herself. This was something that he quite resented, feeling with all the strength possessed by only children that to love someone meant that you were deserving of a share in every aspect of their life.
“Oh, it’s not interesting.” Alexia waved her hand dismissively. There was a very brief silence that nevertheless seemed to shatter before Alexia quirked her lips at him. “I’d much rather hear about you wanting to hit Harry Potter in the face,” she said with all the sincerity and genuine interest that Draco was accustomed to. Something inside him, though, was nagging at the back of his skull. Alexia’s indifferent manner towards her work was unchanging from month to month, almost as if she never wanted to talk about it, and her ready boredom with it was always far too prompt for Draco’s liking. He hated to think that she was keeping things from him but sometimes he wondered whether there was something she hadn’t told him.
“Well he’s always trying to get under my skin,” Draco complained, feeling that a change of subject might not be the worst thing in the world. His nose scrunched up like a child’s in the way it always did when talk turned to Potter and other vague irritants.
“As you’ve said,” Alexia smiled, “a thousand times. You should really stop getting at him.”
“But he’s just such a pain in the arse,” Draco said in annoyance, before lapsing into incoherent grumbling. The only intelligible words that could be gleaned were ‘tosser’, ‘broom-jockey’ and ‘big hairy torture instruments of doom.’ In Draco’s head, though, it all made perfect sense and fully articulate and intelligible sentences were not required to make his point. It was an efficiency of language, really.
“Uh-huh.” Alexia nodded sympathetically. “Because that made so much sense.” She shifted over to sit next to him and threw one comforting arm around his shoulders. Draco leaned into her instinctively, relishing the sisterly contact. Being an only child, along with cultivating a certain selfishness and disregard for other people’s property, had imbued Draco with an edge of loneliness. His parents were often away and it was one reason that he cherished Alexia’s company so much; she had always been there to break the tedium and solitude, a quick floo away. Draco couldn’t imagine not having her around. Now she was away quite often, and so Draco treasured these precious hours, knowing that their time together could only decrease with the loss of his childhood and the onset of their years.
Somewhere outside, the heat was ringing against massing dark clouds as a storm prepared to break itself upon the rolling Wiltshire hills. Their green was slowly fading, purged of colour as the reflective barrier of clouds bled a misty grey into their fabric, sapping the life from the admirable vistas. The thundering immobility was about to explode in what promised to be an almighty storm. Inside, however, a different commotion sprang up all of a sudden in the form of a piercing alarm that rang through the house, it’s shrill wail resonating painfully in Draco’s ears.
“What the hell is that?” he shouted over it, throwing his hands to shield his ears and looking at Alexia in confusion, all peace shattered. She, however, had gone rigid with fear and quickly withdrawn her arm from around Draco, the fingers of which were shaking slightly. “What’s going on?” Draco asked, feeling a cold snap of worry cling uncomfortably around his chest. Alexia’s face had paled and she reached at once for her wand, looking around wildly.
“Oh Merlin,” she breathed and, placing one hand firmly on Draco’s chest, propelled him backwards towards the edge of the room. He winced as he knocked into a Corinthian column, the cold stone sending shivers up his spine nearly as much as the sight of Alexia almost crippled by fear. “Stay back,” she said quickly, her eyes betraying her worry as they flashed desperately from window to window, sliding over Draco as though he were something inanimate, to be protected and sheltered. Useless to her.
“What’s happening?” Draco asked, his mouth hanging open, and not realising that all his questions were currently going unanswered. His heart was thudding painfully in his chest and the undulating screams of the magical alarm were making his ears hurt. He had never seen Alexia look so worried and he wondered frantically what this was all in aid of. He had suspicions of course, horrible, dark snatches of thought that tormented his mind like the frenzied bites of gnats, made worse by his inability to ignore them.
“Try to open the doors!” she called over to him and, mind numb with shock, Draco pressed down on the handles of the French windows which were locked tight.
“Alohomora,” he said, pointing his wand at the catch, but it was to no avail. His body seemed to be acting of its own accord, with no input from his brain.
“Damn.” Alexia tried the other doors but it was no good, they were sealed in. Draco realized this at the same moment she did and felt a keen, painful realization that was abrupt as a punch in the stomach. Something was coming for them. His head pounding with the shrillness of the noise, Draco ran towards his friend and grabbed her by the shoulders as if she were some wild bird.
“What is this?” he asked. “Tell me what’s going on!” Her eyes were glancing at the windows as if expecting to see somebody through them and Draco could feel her trembling under his hands. He let go of her at once but she didn’t move.
“I think I’m in danger,” she managed to whisper through bitten and bloody lips, and Draco had to strain to hear her over the noise. Danger.
“Why?” he asked at once, a fresh wave of fear kicking in. He had never seen Alexia look like this before, she was strong and capable and didn’t go to pieces like this. There was something terrible waiting, just on the periphery of their sight and their emotions; it was a sickening fear that threatened to overcome them, and something more tangible, something with hands and spells and a form. Outside, the first bullet-drops of rain were lashing against the windows and the sky that was once laced with sunlight was now as grey as slate and sharper than a knife in its jagged gashes of cloud. The lights in the room all flickered out at once.
“Lumos!” Draco and Alexia cried, lighting the tips of their wands and casting the silver light across the marble floor.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Alexia said, clinging to Draco. “Do you hear me?”
Draco, panicky with confusion, nodded mutely, unable to speak. His eyes were wide as he glanced around the room, taking in everything, searching for a weak corner, a route out of this shrill madness. His eyes settled on the engraved marble mantelpiece.
“What about the fireplace?” he asked hoarsely. Alexia’s face lit up.
“Of course!” she exclaimed and they moved across the room, their feet tapping with the peals of the alarm in horrible synchronicity. A fork of lightning lit the sky outside and they both stopped, frozen with horror. Illuminated by the lightning, and standing now in the field of their wand light, several black, hooded shapes were skulking in front of the fireplace. Draco whirled around, there were some more behind them, they were surrounded. Thunder crashed deafeningly and the piercing cry of the alarm cut out. A ringing silence prevailed, broken only by Draco’s ragged breathing and the rustle of black material as the figures immediately in front of them began to step forward. Alexia moved protectively in front of Draco, an act that elicited a rumble of throaty laughter from the eleven or so shapes dotted around the room.
“We are not here for the Malfoy child,” came a voice that some part of Draco recognized from some party or another. Then, of course, that voice hadn’t been hidden behind a mask. “He is no traitor.”
“Traitor?” Draco stammered, unable to register any more surprise and settling for blind disbelief. “Lexy? What’s happening?” Alexia grasped his hand painfully tightly and did not let go but neither did she look at him once. Her hand was small in his and slick from sweat.
“Dolohov,” she spat, suddenly angry. “Azkaban not to your liking?” Antonin Dolohov, the Death Eater with the blood of the fabled Aurors Gideon and Fabian Prewitt on his hands, stepped closer, growling slightly.
“Do not talk to me, wretch!” He sprang forward and backhanded Alexia across the face. Draco yelped with surprise and caught her in his arms as she fell backwards, her wand skittering out of her hands. He stood in front of her and faced Dolohov, whose masked demeanour was made more eerie by the lightning that crashed outside the window.
“What do you mean ‘traitor’?” Draco asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Expelliarmus!” A voice from behind Draco effectively disarmed him and his wand flew to join Alexia’s several metres away.
“My apologies, young Master Malfoy.” Draco recognised the voice to belong to another Death Eater, the father of Theodore Nott, one of Draco‘s school friends. “Your loyalty is not in question, this is merely a precaution.” Draco whipped around, finding them surrounded by black-mantled figures, all of whom had withdrawn their wands and were pointing them at Alexia.
“Move aside, Draco,” Dolohov said. “This is not your concern.”
“Tell me what is going on!” Draco demanded. Alexia’s eyes were shining with tears and a bloody smudge decorated her cheek.
“Your friend is a traitor, Master Malfoy,” Nott said calmly.
“What?” Draco asked. “No, she isn’t! Tell them, Lexy, you’re not.” She looked him straight in the eyes and he saw a great pain fill hers as well as a plea for his forgiveness. Suddenly Draco knew what it was she had been keeping from him. “You’re a spy?” he asked, incredulous.
“That’s right!” Dolohov strode forward again and pushed the stunned Draco aside into another Death Eater. He grabbed Alexia by the hair and dragged her forward, even though she kicked and bit and clawed at him in a futile attempt to escape.
“Let her go!” Draco cried, hating to see her this way. “Please don’t!”
“You would suggest we allow this treachery?” Dolohov feigned horror. “Do you wish to share her fate, Draco?” Draco was torn between an innate regard for self-preservation and an overwhelming desire to save his friend.
“I…just…please,” he stammered, not knowing what to say.
“This piece of filth,” spat an unknown Death Eater from across the circle, “has been passing information to the French Aurors about the factions in Angers, and the Parisian circles for over a year.” The Death Eaters were slowly, imperceptibly closing in on Alexia, who had scrambled to her feet and was eyeing them all with a wild terror like some caged animal.
“She has foiled some of the most important French missions to date,” said another.
“Her perfidy knows no bounds. She is ungrateful for the bounty bestowed upon her by Our Lord,” said Crabbe, “and she deliberately works to bring about his downfall.”
“Death is too good for you,” Dolohov growled and threw Alexia to the floor. “Crucio!” he yelled and Draco’s screams mingled with Alexia’s as she writhed and groaned in abject agony. Draco struggled violently against the cold, strong arms that were binding him. All he could think about was how much pain his friend was in and the prickling excitement of the Death Eaters around him was mounting like a palpable force.
After what seemed like hours they lifted the curse and Alexia slumped brokenly to the floor, her lips tinged blue and her muscles spasming uncontrollably. She whimpered softly, her eyes glazed over and her hands trembling. Draco was shaking too, clutched by some faceless Death Eater he was prevented from reaching her and was forced to watch the entire affair play itself before his helpless eyes.
“What are you going to do to me?” Alexia asked with a voice that was cracked and wavering. “Are you going to take me to your slavering skeleton of a master?” She cried out in pain as an incensed Death Eater kicked her unceremoniously in the stomach.
“How dare you?” he shouted, kicking her again. “Such treason!” He was pulled back into rank, leaving Alexia moaning with pain on the floor.
“Oh no,” Dolohov said softly, “you’re not going to the Dark Lord. He has requested you be dealt with here, and we have found a fitting end for you indeed. Draco,” Dolohov turned to the quivering Malfoy who was white with terror, “see what happens to traitors. Consider it part of your training.”
With those words he raised his wand towards the far door and spelled it open. At once and without warning, a creeping chill enveloped the room in its icy embrace. It was as though somebody had opened the door to an arctic wind and it had spread throughout the room, permeating every corner with its bitterness. The pitcher of water on the table began to slowly crystallize into ice and Draco’s breath misted in front of his face.
That feeling of a stony dread, as though he was never going to be happy again, that intense chill, that flash of pain as he relived the worst moments of his life. It could only mean one thing; they had brought a Dementor.
It manifested itself in the doorway as a black shape that glided forward through the ranks of Death Eaters to stand in front of Alexia who was now screaming for mercy. Draco struggled again in vain as he heard it draw rattling breaths from beneath its hood and smelt the foul stench of decay that erupted from its slimy, rotting skin.
“No!” Draco yelled, his nerves set alight with horror. “No! You can’t!” He knew that Alexia would not leave this room with her soul intact. He knew this, and he was terrified for her.
“Traitors deserve this,” Dolohov was saying, a gleam of malice in his obsidian eyes. “You deserve this, Alexia Greaves.” Her protestations were growing more feeble as an incredible weakness overtook her and she slumped to the floor. The Dementor peeled back its hood to reveal the gaping eye-sockets over which were stretched foul and scabbed skin. Some of the Death Eaters were shifting uneasily but others looked hungrily excited. The noise from the storm had been distinguished, the world stilled to encompass solely this moment, painted with the sounds of silence and the colours of revulsion.
“No!” Draco screamed again, breaking the quiet. “Lexy!”
“Quiet, Malfoy!” Dolohov snapped and watched with undisguised fascination as the Dementor lowered itself to the crying woman and lifted her face to his. This was the deep breath before the plunge and Draco was frozen and could not look away. Suddenly it let out a shuddering sigh and sucked at her mouth, her body going rigid in its hands, her veins protruding from beneath her skin, glowing blue, draining her body. It was horrific to watch, the sight and sounds of a soul being lost to darkness, being devoured by some creature of filth and dread. The was a zeal about it, an eagerness in the way it clung to her beautiful skin, leaving smears of putrid flesh over her arms, gripping her wrists so hard that Draco heard the bones snap, sucking at her soul with an indescribable series of gasping noises.
And then it was over.
It might have hurt, no-one knew for sure. It was a more terrible thing to happen to a human being than any other form of punishment for the simple reason that it went against one fundamental truth: human beings are essentially free. It took years of slow torture and aching despair at death’s door to condition a soul, to fashion it into something else, to twist and pervert it until it was unrecognisable. Even the lowliest people born into a serfdom they could not escape had the freedom of conscience, the freedom of thought, to let their minds roam some happier plane and leave their wretched bodies for a few sweet moments. When a soul was inhaled by a Dementor, it became trapped, a caged thing, for eternity. The body would rot and the mind would be confined by constraints of unadulterated despair until the soul itself was broken and then true destruction of a human being would be complete.
A shell of a human lay sprawled now across the floor as the Dementor straightened up, its lusts slaked for the present. Dolohov banished it with a further wave of his wand and slowly a warmth began to return to the room but not to Draco, who was colder than he had ever been in his life. Numbly, he felt himself being released and he fell down at once and crawled over to where Alexia lay, her eyes glazed, her chest rising and falling with mockeries of breaths. He clutched at her hand, tears spilling from his eyes, and found it as clammy as though she were dead; her fate was much crueller, though, to exist as a hollow thing of no worth until her natural years were spent. Her soul was lost forever, irretrievable. Draco was aware of nothing except the feeling of her hand in his.
“She’s gone, Malfoy,” Dolohov said harshly. “Leave her be.” But Draco couldn’t. He wouldn’t let go, this was his friend, he loved her, she might come back. His grief was overwhelming as he held Alexia in his arms, clutching her to his body as though she would respond and pull him into her embrace and tell him that everything would be alright. She was blurry now from tears, her long black hair just a strange line of colour through the distortion of Draco’s eyes.
“Come, Malfoy!” Dolohov shouted angrily and Draco was aware of hands dragging him backwards, away from Alexia’s body. He tried to protest, to tell them that he had to stay with her, but his voice had been silenced. They had done this to her because she was part of the resistance. She was so beautiful and they had absolutely destroyed her. They picked him up as though he was nothing more than a child and somebody carried him into the fireplace. The last thing he saw as emerald flames licked around him was the sight of his beloved Alexia lying on the cold floor, her open eyes unseeing, her hands reaching for anything to pull her back from this abyss. Draco let the grief swamp him.
The next thing he knew, Nott was carrying him out of the fireplace of his father’s study. Draco was completely limp in his arms and it was with a vague blurriness that he registered his father’s open-mouthed surprise.
“What happened?” Lucius asked urgently, getting up from his desk and rushing to take Draco in his arms and lay him on a leather settee.
“He was there when the Dementor took care of Miss Greaves,” Nott was saying in an undertone. Lucius loosened Draco’s collar and felt his pulse. “It affected him very badly.”
“Of course it did, you fool, she was his oldest friend!” Lucius admonished Nott who stood, wringing his hands beside the fireplace. “He shouldn’t have been there,” he muttered. “Draco,” he said softly, bending over his son, “are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Draco murmured automatically, trying to sit up and finding himself very weak from shock and horror.
“You’re so cold,” Lucius said worriedly, smoothing back Draco’s hair and tilting his wand to his son’s forehead. He muttered something and Draco immediately felt a rush of warmth fill him and he started to feel a little better. He knew he must look awful, with tear tracks running down his face and his hands shaking like leaves.
“Fetch Narcissa,” Lucius growled at Nott, who hurried off at once. Draco managed to sit up, even though he felt as if he was about to break in two. There was a fragility to him at that moment that he hated. It was of mind as well as body and his thoughts were so bleak that he thought he would never be free of them.
“Are you alright?” Lucius asked again and Draco nodded, although the opposite was plainly true.
“Lexy-” Draco said, his voice hitching, “she’s, she’s-” He couldn’t continue. It was just too hard. His heart was still beating unnaturally fast and his breaths were becoming sharp and erratic as they grated against his lungs, the oxygen feeling rather like a poison that he knew he needed.
“I know,” Lucius breathed, “I’m so sorry, Draco.”
“I watched,” Draco said numbly. “I saw the whole thing.” He looked up just in time to see the troubled expression on Lucius’s face intensify with this declaration. He felt a sudden irrational surge of anger towards his father, who stood their so concerned and uneasy. He wanted to lash out at him and at the world for being so set in the past, when murder in the name of justice, whosever justice it should be, was ok.
“You shouldn’t have.” Lucius looked worried.
“I watched as that thing- devoured her!” Draco’s voice rose, full of anger and grief. He could see it replaying in front of his eyes, that exact moment when Alexia had gone limp and Draco had known that he would never talk to her again. They would never go to Paris together like she had promised, she would never know what results he got for his NEWTs or what made Fizzing Whizzbees fizz. She would never be aware of anything ever again.
That’s when it hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.
Draco leaned forward and vomited heavily.
Lucius made a soothing sound and the door slammed open loudly to reveal Narcissa rushing in, a sylph of a woman with a contrite Nott following in her wake.
“Oh my God!” she cried, swooping down on Draco. “Are you alright? What happened?”
“He witnessed Alexia’s punishment,” Lucius said, taking his wife’s manicured hand comfortingly.
“What did they do to her?” Narcissa suddenly paled further, looking up at her husband with fear in her eyes. “Draco, what did you see happen?”
“They gave her the Kiss,” Draco mumbled. “I had to watch, Dolohov made me watch.”
“Is this true?” Lucius demanded of Nott who nodded.
“Dolohov wanted to make sure Draco saw what happens to traitors,” he said.
“Bastard!” Lucius exclaimed, standing up and kicking over his snake-topped cane with fury. “How dare he?”
Draco was in shock, rendered immovable. He could see nothing but rotting flesh, could hear nothing but those rattling sighs, could feel nothing but Alexia’s hand in his. He saw her try to protect him, he saw her laughing, he saw her face delighted by sunlight. He saw her lying down, her body colder than the marble of her bed. He buried his face in his mother’s shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” she was saying. “Believe me, Draco, I am so sorry you had to see that.”
Narcissa was as thin as a rapier but with a sinewy strength about her that held Draco fast, as if never intending to let him go. Alexia had been a close friend of Draco’s for so long that she had become like a second child to both Lucius and Narcissa and it was with a racking grief that this news was absorbed.
“Did you know?” Draco asked suddenly, pulling back and surveying his parents suspiciously. “Did you know that this was going to happen to her?” Their glance at each other confirmed his fears and he stood up hurriedly, further sickened. “You knew!” he exclaimed. “How could you let them do that to her?”
“We knew she was a spy for the Light side,” Lucius said. “We didn’t know what the Dark Lord planned for her.”
“Why didn’t you warn her?” Draco asked. “Why did you just let her be destroyed like that?”
“If we had said anything then we would have gone the same way,” Narcissa placated. “It would have been treachery.”
“Believe us, Draco, when we say that we never wished it upon her,” Lucius said, his voice catching in his throat in a way that Draco had never heard before in his father. “She was like a daughter to us, remember?”
“She’s gone now, it’s too late,” Draco said, moving towards the door, still feeling nauseous by the whole affair and filled with contempt for the absent malice that they called ‘Lord’.
“Draco,” Narcissa went to follow him but he flinched from her touch and turned around.
“Please just leave me alone,” he said, and walked out of the door.
By morning, Alexia would be shut away where no-one would find her, and there she would simply exist until her death, devoid of a soul.
Draco would never forget her.
“Draco!” His father was coming after him. Draco stopped but didn’t turn around. “Look,” Lucius said, “I know how difficult that must have been for you to watch.”
“Really?” Draco rubbed his eyes. “You knew, father. You knew that this was going to happen, and you didn’t even try to save her!”
“I’m sorry.” Lucius laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. “You should never have seen that, but Draco, listen to me, I know you’re grieving but you cannot let your anger get the best of you.”
“What do you mean?” Draco turned around at once. His father’s ice-blue eyes, so like his own, were filled with a paternal concern, an emotion that many believed Lucius Malfoy incapable of. Draco knew differently, he knew that his father held him in high esteem, and as an only child, Draco received a lot of affection and attention that went unnoticed by those ready to condemn all Malfoys together.
“I mean,” Lucius looked troubled, “that if you were to speak about this incident and let slip what you felt for Alexia, then you might place yourself in danger. I’m only thinking of you.”
“Don’t worry, father,” Draco said, looking away, unable to meet his father’s eyes. “I will behave as befits a Malfoy, and as somebody who will one day become like those men who destroyed someone I loved.” He knew the uncharacteristic coldness in his voice was chilling his father, but he didn’t care.
“I’m just saying that I don’t think it would be wise to talk about this to anyone,” Lucius said, an edge to his voice that was inflected in the hope of jarring some sense into Draco. “If the Dark Lord was to hear of any insubordination, even verbal, then you would be punished.”
“Why didn’t you take part in this afternoon’s activities, father?” Draco asked suddenly. “Where were you?”
“Draco,” Lucius said warningly.
“Oh I’m genuinely curious,” Draco said, turning round again. Lucius sighed.
“You always were rash with your words,” he murmured under his breath. “Dolohov requested permission to deal with Alexia and it was he that chose those who would accompany him. Dolohov has little love for any Malfoy, and has envied my position in the ranks for as long as I remember. I’m glad I wasn’t there, though.”
“Lucky you.” Draco continued his way upstairs.
“Take my advice!” Lucius called after him. “Best not talk of this matter to anyone, you know what our Lord’s policies are, you must accept them.”
Draco paused before moving on.
Yes he knew of Voldemort’s glorious policies, and the danger he would be in if some of his fellow classmates overheard a diatribe about this injustice. He was well practiced in the art of stoicism, and his crystalline façade would not falter at school, he would be the same Draco Malfoy to his friends and enemies alike. But something inside him would have changed irreversibly, and that same delight and passion for his ideals would have charred.
Draco had been brought up knowing that one day he would take his parents’ sides, his Lord’s Mark and help to accomplish the cause that Voldemort had established. He grew up hating ‘Mudbloods’ because he had been taught that they were the reason for everything that went wrong with the wizarding race, they diluted the purity of magic and of blood.
His ideals had been firmly stamped on his chest for as long as he could remember and to have them suddenly questioned was like having the floor yawn beneath him and swallow him whole. It was like falling through some abyss, knowing that he would never hit the bottom because there lay the necessity to change the way he thought and acted and that was a frightening concept. In one fateful afternoon, everything had been called into question and he found himself silently engaging in a moral debate that led inevitably to the acidic sense of guilt, loss and anger that had come with the loss of his friend for her subversion. If Voldemort was going to be defeated one day, Alexia’s destruction would have been for nothing, but Draco knew that she was already one more wasted life and that thought haunted him like nothing else could.
Imbued with a new bitterness and contempt for the world, this school year would prove very interesting for him indeed.
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Am off partying tonight so expect hungover posts for the next couple of days or absolutely nothing as I hide from light and food underneath my bed and befriend the dust bunnies. What the hell is a dust bunny?
I hope everyone across the world has a fantastic new year. You all deserve it.