Splendidisssimus: The Unauthorised Draco Malfoy Biography
Stories spanning roughly 25 years of Draco's life from ~16 to ~40, featuring also his parents and Theo. Draco masters wandless magic. Theo is employed as Draco's researcher / assistant and then personal healer / caregiver.
Fair warning / assurance: I'm actually incapable of giving them a tragic ending. But man will they suffer a lot before they get out of it.
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✨Observation✨
Draco Malfoy has a lot of interesting potential which ends up completely wasted, as far as I can tell. He seems to be genuinely good at, well, everything he acts arrogant about -- academics, Quidditch, dueling, influencing people. He is a genuinely hard worker. He's charismatic and clever. And all of that seems squandered after 5th year.
Secondary observation: being forced to work for Voldemort for two years while he lives in your very house is a perfect storm for CPTSD. Plus, life as a Malfoy is going to be very complicated for a while after Voldemort is defeated.
✨Plan✨
Explore where that potential could actually take him without being wildly OOC. Explore the actual ramifications of the books. Explore wizard society. Use Draco as a vehicle to address my serious humanitarian and lore issues with the Wizarding Worldbuilding.
✨The "Alternate" Part✨
Draco's assignment from Voldemort to kill Dumbledore also came with a time bomb -- a curse that progressively weakened him the longer he went without succeeding, and would have killed him at the 1 year mark: less than a week after Dumbledore actually died. This effect is permanent and leaves him physically weak and with a vastly diminished life expectancy.
And then have Draco accidentally dump a cauldron of Amortentia on Theo to turn it Draco Malfoy x Theodore Nott because reasons.
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Tags
#splendidissimus writing for the stories.
#splendidissimus eu for supporting stories (not actually the "ages 16-40 Draco" stories, but things like stories about his parents or pre-school events).
#splendidissimus worldbuilding for headcanons and extrapolation / examinations of the worldbuilding I am taking to be true.
#scene from the books for scenes from the books written from Draco's perspective, or seeing his side of it.
#otp answers for answered prompts and questions about Theo and Draco
#character answers for answered prompts and questions about them individually.
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Bookmarks
Most of the stories are fluff and filler and musings, but some of them are actually key plot points for this whole universe, so here they are:
Voldemort's Defeat & Immediate Aftermath:
The Trial of Draco Malfoy
Summer After Hogwarts
Theo comes back / Draco's official diagnosis
Draco's Birthday // "I'm never going to leave you alone."
((Promptspiration:
@whumptober-archive 2023: day 27:
Scars / "Let me see." ))
Genre: angst
Romance level: none
Angst level: 3/5
Draco's headspace: shame -> retrospective
((words: ~1100))
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It was inevitable that eventually Draco would poorly time his morning routine, especially when he had a hard night of dreams and had to drag himself out of bed. This morning he was still dressing when his mother checked that he was up with her normal habit of rapping on the door and then pushing it open without a pause.
He immediately turned away, buttoning his shirt, and she started to close the door, but then stopped. "Is that a scar?"
He resolutely continued facing away from her, and buttoned his shirt up to his throat. "It doesn't matter."
"Then it is." She let herself into the room. "Show me."
He neither answered nor obeyed, but took his robe from the wardrobe and shrugged it on.
She put her hand on his shoulder before he could button it. "Let me see."
"It's years old, Mother. It doesn't matter."
"You understand that that's worse." She gently but undeniably turned him to face her and unbuttoned the top of his shirt.
He took over so that at least he was the one doing it, if it was going to be done. Two buttons and he could pull the shirt aside to show her the edge of the scar on his chest.
"What is that?" She pulled his shirt down with two fingers, trying to find the edge of it. "You weren't injured like this in the battle…?"
"No." Reluctantly, he completely unbuttoned his shirt and held it open so she could see the whole scar, and looked away. He wished she wouldn't look — not just at the scar, but at him. He needed the shield of tailoring and fine materials to hide himself, because without them, the truth was just pale, narrow, sunken weakness.
"That is enormous," she said with a frown, touching the top corner absently. It extended from the top of his left shoulder, all the way diagonally across his chest, until it disappeared under his ribs on the right side, in one harsh, unbroken line. It wasn't dark or raised or particularly thick, but it was very present.
A proper wizard shouldn't have scars. It was some sort of personal failing, to have gotten in the way of something that brutish. Only Aurors and beast handlers and curse-breakers acquired scars in the course of their rough work. Not their sort. Certain not from something so… stupid.
Honestly, the fact that it wasn't even from anything important was worse. A shameful mark with a pathetic story written across his disgusting body.
He couldn't take being looked at any longer and turned away to button his shirt again.
"That looks like it could have killed you."
"Almost," he said, looking distantly at the wood of the wardrobe. "It was worse than it looks now. It cut up my face, all across my chest… Thirty more seconds of bleeding out and he'd have been a murderer. But Snape handled it. Only the worst one scarred."
"Who did that to you?"
"Harry Potter," he said.
He sensed more than heard an angry hiss of her breath. "Why didn't I know about this?"
"It was sixth year… There were more important things going on."
"There are not more important things than someone trying to kill you! Even that."
"In all honesty…" He let out a small, reluctant sigh. "I don't think it was intentional. He was still stood there gawping after Snape got there and saved me. Between him and Crabbe, it seems like it's only ever idiots who don't know how their spells work that run the risk of killing me…" Well, them, and the Dark Lord…
"I still should have been informed."
This time he didn't speak until he had finished buttoning his shirt, maybe half a minute. "What good would it have done?" he finally said quietly. "They wouldn't have punished him."
She crossed her arms firmly. "I would have seen to it that they did."
"How? Even if he weren't their little golden boy, how could he get any consequences without me explaining how it all started because he burst in on me crying because I couldn't find a way to kill Dumbledore? Anyway… I tried to Crucio him in the same duel," he admitted. "I'd have been the one punished. Even though I never managed to touch him," he added with some bitterness. That was just his lot in life, it seemed — try to do something wrong, fail miserably, and still be punished for it.
She lightly touched the hair at the back of his head. "You still should have told me. I don't like the idea that you can nearly die and I don't even know. Even if I can't help, I need to know."
"I know," he admitted quietly. "But you had enough to worry about."
"It isn't your job to protect me, from worry or anything else."
"I want to," he murmured. And he had tried to protect her. Even though he'd never done her a single iota of good, he had tried…
He was silent for a moment, buttoning his robe mechanically, and she continued playing with his hair absently for that time. "Snape was the only one who knew," he mused distantly. "And it turns out that Potter was his pet, too. If you hadn't trapped him with that Vow… maybe he would have let me die there."
Her hand slid down to rub his shoulder. "I genuinely don't think so."
The words were hollow, though. The only reason he would have not to was if he cared, and Draco didn't have any reason anymore to think he ever truly had. He had probably always been lying, to stay close to his father, out of usefulness and just in case. He was bitterly stupid to have ever trusted him. Now he had to look back at his whole life and try to pick out which parts were real and which were Snape using him. Probably more realistic to assume all of it.
"It had to have crossed his mind. It would have saved him a lot of trouble. It would have saved Dumbledore… It would have saved him."
"'Saved him'? Severus' death isn't your fault."
Not directly. But if he hadn't been the one to kill Dumbledore…
Maybe an awful death was just the lot of a traitor… or a hero…
"I know," he told her, because his actual thoughts were too complicated to put into words, and she didn't need to be subjected to that anyway. He had already said too much.
He straightened his sleeves and ran his hand through his hair once to fix it, then turned back to her, calm, all his scars and the truth of weakness hidden under the polished outer shell. "I'm sorry I held you up."
Your OTP is lying side by side on the grass together. They've survived the Horrors, they've survived the Plot, and now they're safe and happy together, just watching the clouds.
Draco and Theo are both better than an upstanding person should be.
Theo doesn't tend to lie-lie, but he is very secretive and doesn't tell people more than he thinks they need to know, and sometimes what he thinks they need to know is an alternate set of facts.
Unless he's afraid, Draco's a consummate liar and actor, who actively enjoys keeping secrets and naturally says whatever the situation warrants, without any regard for its relation to the truth. The fact that something is untrue doesn't ever enter his calculation on whether he should say it. His gifts are always surprises and he doesn't tell people anything he doesn't mean to. (His tendency to keep secrets can be problematic when people are trying to help him...)
The prompt theme for December 2023 is Decadencember!
If you use this list, please tag me here @thepromptfoundry, I’d love to see your writing and art!
Feel free to combine different days' prompts with each other, or combine them with other seasonal events! Use your OCs, your favorite characters from media, whatever tickles your fancy.
Respond to as many prompts as you want or as interest you, don’t worry about missing or skipping any. Remember, this is supposed to be fun!
Plain text list below the cut:
1) Fine clothes
2) Jewels
3) Abundant food
4) Majestic power
5) Extravagant spending
6) Royal treatment
7) Self-adornment
8) Lush fur
9) Silver and gold
10) A luxurious bath
11) Natural wonder
12) Precious secrets
13) Sumptuous solitude
14) A carefree night out
15) Plenty of time to sleep in
16) Blissful devotion
17) Beauty and grace
18) Velvet darkness
19) Warm drinks
20) Cool drinks
21) Cozy blankets
22) Whole-hearted love
23) Sweet treats
24) Maximalist décor
25) Lavish gifts
26) Domestic comfort
27) A magnificent party
28) Elegant movement
29) Joyous reunion
30) Fond memories
31) A bright future
The Lumos Theo cast lit up the hall like daylight, and he helped Draco out of the tomb and up the roughly hewn stone passage. it was different from the rest of the tomb, he noticed; the actual chambers had been well-finished, even if age had worn them down and made it dirty. This was just carved straight through the side of the mountain with no sense of decoration or comfort, no finishing touches. Almost like a workman's tunnel.
They felt the movement of cold, fresh air currents before anything else, and when they turned the final corner in the hall that had become more like a cave, they could see stars — the tunnel simply opened to the elements. He hadn't realised they'd been in there long enough for it to get dark.
They were fairly high up the side of the mountain, and the ground around them was rough and steep. The tunnel was probably barely visible from below, and basically inaccessible. He found some evidence that some animal — hippogriff, he thought, by the claw marks — used it occasionally, but nothing that looked very recent, so it should be okay to stop.
"Here, Draco." He guided him to the wall at the edge of the tunnel mouth where they could have fresh air and the breathtaking view. "Sit down, let's take care of you. I need your potion bag."
Draco made a vague sound and let him move him around. It took him a long moment to start fumbling at his pocket, awkwardly reaching across himself. He was very badly out of it, the effect of the revival spell fading already.
"It's all right, I'll get it." He caught Draco's thin hand and set it back in his lap, and dug through his pocket himself.
When he pulled out the potion case Draco carried, he focused very firmly on his control and unshrank the bag and its contents, so that the stone he had made didn't interfere with the spell. It worked without incident, luckily.
"Here, Draco. Drink this." He put a blood replenishing potion in his hand and lifted it from his lap. He wasn't completely sure Draco could hear him or understand, so he helped him, lifting the potion for him and holding the back of his head gently to help him drink it.
The net effect of taking a blood replenishing potion while still sporting open wounds was that he immediately started bleeding more; blood poured out of the claw marks on his neck, and even his bandaged and tourniqueted arms leaked new blood. But Draco was resistant to healing magic, so it wasn't always a simple matter to close his wounds, and taking the potion would keep him safe until it could be dealt with.
The second effect was the eerily near-instant way alertness came back to him. He blinked his eyes open and took a deep breath, and shifted up straighter against the wall, looking around. "We're out?" He wiped his mouth and handed back the bottle absently.
"Yeah." He rubbed his leg and shifted to sit beside him. "I'm about to try to heal all this, but we'll still have to go to the hospital, or you'll have some nasty scars. I don't have anything here to deal with cursed wounds."
"I figured." He held out his right arm.
The gash in Draco's arm was pretty nasty looking, when he unwrapped it, inflamed and ragged, oozing sluggishly. Inferius wounds were known to fester no matter how they were cared for, and these had barely received any care at all.
But he had Aethelmaer's stone now. Cor Magicae. The Heart of Magic. What Inferi scratch was going to defy him?
He clutched the stone in his off hand, focusing on how it warmed his hand and pulsed almost in time with his heartbeat, and ran his wand over Draco's wounds, chanting Vulnera Sanentur.
It was easy. Easy. The wound stopped bleeding without any resistance, and then the skin came back together at his thought. He ran the wand over it a third time to remove the curse, and the colour improved immediately. The ragged line where the wound had been was still visible, but that could be treated to keep it from scarring.
"Any pain?" he asked, massaging Draco's arm experimentally.
"Plenty, but that doesn't hurt anymore."
"Good."
Draco glanced down at his limp other arm, then toward his face. "My left hand…" His tone of voice was exactly the kind of measured calm that was used to cover that he felt uneasy.
"I know. That problem's different; it's been wearing the tourniquet too long." He glanced up at the starry sky. "Six hours or so, I figure. It will be badly damaged by now. Saint Mungo's will have to deal with that." He patted his knee and peeled the sodden makeshift bandage off his neck wounds. These ones had actual black lines radiating from them under the skin, travelling along his veins. It was a very good thing he was here. "I can take care of these, though, so hopefully you won't need a second potion."
Draco nodded stiffly and laid his head back against the wall to give him the best access to them.
Five minutes of chanting and wandwork, the alchemical heart hot and electrifying the whole time in his hand, and the claw gashes were closed and he had pulled the black curse out of him, as though the Inferi wounds were no more dangerous than a papercut.
"Feeling weak," Draco reported quietly. "Not like blood loss, just…physically."
"The healing magic is taking a lot out of you."
"That's not normal…"
"It's all right." He rubbed his arm. "I'm done. You don't have to worry about this anymore." He Vanished all of the blood with barely a thought and cleaned Draco up. "Now it's almost impossible to tell there were ever Inferi here. Any pain, stiffness?"
Draco shook his head and looked outside. "My cloak should be in that bag. The extra pocket."
He had to dig around a bit, because it turned out what Draco meant by 'extra pocket' was a seam on the inside lining that opened into an expanded space he could shove his whole arm into. "I'm surprised you can shrink this without all the enchantments exploding," he commented as he fished the cloak out, and helped Draco lean forward so he could fasten it around him. "Better?"
He nodded, pulling the cloak around him and hiding his arms. "I just need a minute."
"Take your time. You'll be okay." He adjusted his position to lean on his crossed legs, looking out the mouth of the tunnel. The brisk, cold breeze felt good to him, and smelled fresh and clean. It was a nice change after all day inside a musty tomb full of alchemy fumes. He fancied he could just make out the towers of Hogwarts in the distance under the moonlight, but he might be fooling himself.
He moved his hand to Draco's leg, rubbing it absently. "You did really well."
"Yes, I'm very good at bleeding."
The sharpness in Draco's voice made him look over. "Everything okay?" Draco just stared at him, and he frowned. "Are you still cross? We just did something incredible. You should enjoy it."
"'We' didn't do anything. I was an unwilling bystander while you performed some of the Darkest magic I have seen."
"Firstly, that's absurdly overdramatic. And second, this thing just saved your life." He held up the Heart. "You owe it a lot better than your scorn."
"I'm not going to be grateful that it saved me from danger it put me in."
He narrowed his eyes. "Are you talking about the Heart, or me?"
"Now he gets it," Draco snarked. Then he sighed. "I didn't want to talk about this right away, but you're acting like there's nothing wrong. It's almost like you think this is a good thing."
"Isn't it?"
Draco gave him a hard look. "Are you actively trying to scare me?"
"With this, I can cast healing magic that makes Inferi wounds completely trivial. Think about what it can do!"
"Yes, Nott, think about what it can do. It's amplifying your magic's power, or acting like another focus like a wand or something, right?"
"In the most layman of terms. I need to do a lot more experimentation to determine its actual capabilities."
"And you made that out of Wizard blood. Do you not grasp how Dark that is?"
"No one was meant to die from that blood sacrifice. It's not Aethelmaer's fault you have a bleeding disorder; blame Voldemort for your state, not the alchemy."
"You're still missing the fucking point! Are you doing this intentionally?" He clutched the cloak around him, because he was restless and wanted to move around in his agitation but couldn't, really. "Do you think more of those things means more power? Or what about one made from not just a lot of blood, but a whole body's worth? What other blood do you think you could use — house elves? Centaurs? Unicorns?"
Admittedly, that idea had immense promise. If the magical properties of unicorn blood could be combined with the effect of the Heart, the result could be something spectacular…
"I can see you wanting to try it." Draco's expression was disgusted. "Now imagine that Voldemort knew about this. Muggleborns disappeared into the Ministry to be harvested for their blood. House elves slaughtered for it like livestock. Every Death Eater with one of those damned rocks."
"Obviously that would be horrible, but people like that don't need this kind of magic to be horrible, as he already proved. You can't stop progress just because evil people exist." He pushed himself up to his feet and dusted off his robe. "You should calm down, this isn't good for you."
"Don't tell me to calm down."
"Well, I put a lot of effort into healing you, and you're going to waste it if you have a heart attack. You're not in good shape for hysterics right now."
"'Hysterics'," Draco said coldly.
"Catastrophising. You're working yourself up over nothing." He took Draco's hand to get him to his feet. Draco did it, but ungraciously, and then he swayed and needed Theo's support to keep him up. "We need to get you to the hospital, and then you'll be in a better place once you're healed. If you're still eager to argue about the ethics of a magic that just saved your life when you're medically cleared, fine, yell at me again then."
He could actually see Draco biting his tongue to keep from dragging on the conversation. He doubted he had heard the last of it, but maybe he would surprise him and realise how he was overreacting when he was in a better physical condition.
Draco was still having trouble standing; Theo had thought he might be all right after he gathered himself, but it was enduring. Clearly Draco noticed it, too. "Am I this weak because that stone is still getting its power from me?" he asked quietly, leaning heavily on his shoulder.
"No," he assured him, and helped him to the edge of the cave mouth, looking down at the Heart in the palm of his hand. The Scottish highlands stretched out below them in picturesque roughness just visible in the moonlight. "It was alchemically transmuted; it is something completely new now, with no connection to you. But the nature of healing magic is that it calls on a body's own life force to heal it; the less vitality you have, the more difficult it is for magic to heal you, and thus healing resistance. Overcoming healing resistance with spells this powerful is forcing your body to heal in ways it frankly can't support. You'll need some time to recover just from the strain of the healing magic." He rubbed his side, avoiding his unusable arm. "It seemed like a better idea than leaving Inferi wounds to fester, though. At least now you just need rest."
"Following that logic, it sounds like you could kill me with healing magic."
"Normally, no, the healing would just stop working if you were too weak to do it. With this, though… That's an interesting question." He closed his hand around the Heart. "Right, I'm going to Apparate you."
"Go on then." Draco leaned close against him and buried his face in his shoulder; that was more necessary for flooing than Apparating, but it didn't hurt. Theo held him tightly and turned them on the spot to Apparate to the hospital.
Saint Mungo's was a little busy, with the waiting room half full of prospective patients, but Theo had privileges as a healer there and bypassed the welcome witch to admit Draco himself with just a note to send Healer Pye to him when he was in.
He got Draco settled in the nonmagical injuries ward without really exchanging another word, and then got an assistant started with the dittany to minimise the scarring. Then he sat beside him to take a look at his arm.
It was bad. The skin was cold and it was completely limp, and Draco couldn't feel it at all past the ache in his upper arm. He tried healing the original cuts, silently so as to not bring attention to what he was doing, but there was no response from his body, and that was not a good sign. He looked at Draco's face while Draco watched the dittany application.
He felt uncomfortably responsible for this. It was a fact that Draco would have bled to death without the tourniquet, even from such minor wounds, and so it had been necessary, but if he had been faster…
"I'll send someone in to look at this," he said finally. "It's beyond my area of expertise; I'm not even confident saying it's safe to remove the tourniquet myself."
Draco nodded absently. "I need you to bring me new clothes, arrange for an Auror to come see me tomorrow, and tell Mother what happened."
He didn't mean to make a face, but the judgmental way Draco looked at him with his eyebrows raised told him that he had. "Is making me tell her a punishment for putting you in this situation? Because that's pretty petty, if so."
"No." Draco looked back at his other arm. The assistant healer applying dittany was making a show of minding her own business. "It's because the thought of writing is frankly exhausting right now, and you are my assistant."
"All right. Sorry." He stood. "I'll be back shortly. Try to get some sleep if you can; you need all the rest you can get."
Draco nodded without a word, and he left in preoccupied silence.
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Theo made a detour, between picking up Draco's clothes and finding his mother, to Lucius' office. It was empty, as he preferred; he left the books from the tomb on his desk with a note that they were for the library if he wanted them.
Then the hard part. The house elf met him on his way out of Lucius' office, and squeaked as he almost tripped on her. "Begging Master Theo's pardon. Mistress will see you now."
"All right. Her room?"
"No sir, in the drawing room, sir."
"Got it." He put his hands in his pockets as he walked, turning the Heart over in his fingers.
Narcissa had come out to meet him and was standing by the mantel; despite the late hour she was still fully presentable and ready to be seen, and he wondered, not for the first time, if she always stayed that way or if she ever relaxed. Her look for him as he came in was mild and tolerant and he knew that was about to change.
He straightened up his shoulders a bit as he faced her, because she seemed to judge his posture just by existing. "I'm to inform you that Draco is in hospital. It's not his heart, and mostly he just needs rest. He'll be okay shortly." There, that couldn't make her angry.
"If it isn't his heart, what is it?"
Of course she couldn't leave it alone. "He suffered some wounds from Inferi in a tomb we were exploring."
Now the look she gave him was much less tolerant. She looked him over in clear and uncomfortable inspection. "I notice that you aren't injured," she pointed out coolly.
"No, I guess not," he admitted. He hadn't really thought about that. "He defended me so I could get us out."
"You are meant to be protecting him." And there it was — her expression had hardened and showed him disdain that he knew was actually anger. And probably worry. Draco insisted she was fearful, and he couldn't see it, but sure, maybe that was in there too. Whatever the exact details, she wasn't going to forgive him for a while.
"I know. I'm sorry it turned out this way. He's safe now, though."
She didn't answer him, but took up the floo powder. "It's not visiting hours," he interrupted. She looked at him for a very long second without blinking, and he eventually got the message. "I'll let you in."
She said, "Quite so," tossed the floo powder into the fire, and directed it to the hospital. He followed right behind her.
The welcome witch stood up behind her desk and tried to stall them, but Narcissa utterly ignored her and Theo assured her it was fine, which distracted her long enough for them to get by. One icy lift ride later and he brought her to Draco's ward.
The ward was empty, because nonmagical injuries tended to be pretty simple to treat with basic healing magic. There were a couple healers clustered around Draco's bed at the far end with the curtains half drawn, and as they approached they could hear Draco firmly saying "—not be cutting off my arm. Think of a better solution."
Narcissa looked at Theo with utter disgust and swept past him, even the clipped clicking of her steps telling him off.
Draco obviously recognised her by her step. "Hello, Mother," he said before she was even quite there. "I'm afraid you've nothing very interesting to see here. You'll only be watching me sleep."
"Mrs. Malfoy." One of the healers came from the side of the bed to intercept her. "You really can't be here—"
Theo would really like to see them stop her. He shook his head to try to tell them to leave it alone, and got to Draco's bedside. "What's the situation?" He had bandages plastered over his neck and shoulder where that wound had been, indicating that that hadn't responded immediately to the dittany treatment and had needed more help for the scarring, but it was being dealt with.
His arm, though… They'd gotten the tourniquet off and controlled the immediate effects, but his normally near-skeletal arm was swollen outrageously and lying limp half-curled in his lap. He touched his hand to check and found it still cool and unresponsive. He could barely find the pulse in his wrist. The cuts had been bandaged but not healed, and the Dark Mark peeked out of the top of the bandages. Draco would never tolerate that being visible, normally.
"Severe muscle breakdown from impaired blood flow," healer Dommet reported, her tone clipped and businesslike. "Nerve damage — it remains to be seen how it recovers after the swelling goes down. No response to healing."
"No," he agreed. "Healing the Inferi wounds was taxing enough on his vitality, I don't think he'll respond to healing magic at all for a little while. I'll keep trying."
"How did you do that, by the way?" Dommet asked him critically. "His healing resistance should have made Inferi wounds much more serious than merely some potential scarring."
"Vulnera Sanentur and a fair amount of desperation?" he suggested. It didn't seem necessary or wise to share the Heart just yet, until he knew what it could do. "But it did push him too far."
"You were able to heal those, but not these relatively minor lacerations?"
He shook his head. "We were in a position where treatment simply wasn't possible for nearly six hours. By the time magic was possible, his arm was already beyond me. Were there complications in restoring blood flow?"
"Yes," she said bluntly. "The dying muscles are poison to the blood, and Pye insists that will be damaging his kidneys and heart. Normally, I would heal his arm and a day of antitoxins would be sufficient. Instead, he'll be on fluids hourly and blood purifiers every four hours until the swelling relieves. And observation, of course, but you're here now."
"I recommend making a small incision to relieve the pressure and reduce the swelling," Pye commented. "My esteemed colleague here disagrees."
"You always want to cut into people, it's obscene." She seemed disgruntled.
"My clothes, Theo," Draco interrupted.
"Right, of course." He handed Draco his clean clothes and turned back to the healers. "You mentioned amputation?"
"If the muscles can't be repaired…" she said. "If he doesn't regain sensation or function, it's just a poisonous liability. A bleeding disorder and a limb without feeling are a disastrous combination."
"We won't let it come to that," Theo said confidently, and reached back to pat Draco's leg, but didn't find him. Looking back, he realised Draco had sat up on the other edge of the bed, and his mother was helping him into his new robe. Both the shirt and robe had had their sleeve split along the bottom to make space for his swollen arm, and she was helping guide his useless arm through. He frowned; she was trying to displace him because she was offended he allowed Draco to be injured. As though she could have done better; Draco would be dead several times over now if it weren't for him, and that wouldn't be any different if she'd been there with him instead. What right did she have to judge?
And this was Draco's health they were talking about — Draco wasn't even paying attention.
"The swelling is so severe it's cutting off the blood supply itself," Pye was saying. "Probably putting pressure on the nerves. It needs to be addressed."
"Leave it, for a day or two," he said without looking away from Draco. "Maybe it won't be necessary to interfere. The less we have to make him bleed, the better."
"I don't think that's the right decision. 'Wait and see' is just encouraging more damage."
"The decision is made, though. The complications for another bleeding wound are too serious. That's how he got into this mess in the first place."
"I hope you're right…"
Theo moved around to the other side of the bed and took Draco's good arm while he was straightening his sleeve fastidiously. Narcissa looked at him coolly, but wasn't going to countermand a healer's orders about his health. "Draco, you need to take your fluids and rest. You have another potion in…" He looked over for a sign, and Dommet pointed out the hourglass sitting beside the bed, dribbling pink sand through ornate golden filigree. "Looks about three hours. You need as much rest as you can get."
"I know." Draco didn't resist and allowed himself to be guided into lying back against the head of the bed, but he took his arm back and used it to move his left hand into his lap. "Though listening to the lot of you discuss cutting me up is hardly restful."
"We're leaving," Theo assured him. Well, the others were; he was here to watch over him.
"I'll consult with my doctor friend," Pye said, coming around the bed, and behind him Dommet made a face that made her look like Narcissa. "But I think a week of observation is a starting point. You're taking over?" Theo nodded. "You're watching for nausea, trouble breathing, arrhythmia…"
"Sounds like a normal Tuesday," Draco said with exaggerated casualness, closing his eyes like he was ready to sleep.
"You see why we have to watch so closely to make sure your blood isn't poisoning your kidneys."
"I've got it," Theo assured him. "Thanks for your help. both of you." He watched the other healers leave and looked at Narcissa. "Are you satisfied he's all right?"
"He is not," she said coolly.
"But he will be, with a little bit of rest and observation. There's no reason for you to be concerned." She didn't seem in the least willing to agree, and he struggled not to show his annoyance. "If you want to watch over him tomorrow while I'm working, that would be welcomed," he managed to put together, very civilly, he thought. "But right now it is after visiting hours, and I've got this. I'll stay up with him until morning."
She pressed her lips together, then turned and pulled the sheet up to Draco's chest, lifting his injured arm over the top. "I will be back in the morning."
"Thank you, mother." He squeezed her hand before she pulled away.
She didn't say a word to Theo before she left, and he took that as fully intentional rudeness. He didn't much mind. He sat on Draco's bed as they were finally left alone.
"Need anything?" he asked gently, taking his hand.
"Have a spare arm?" Draco spoke without opening his eyes.
"I'd give you one of mine, but I don't think it would match."
"Can't have that. No, I just need to sleep, please."
"All right." He kissed his forehead and then stood and drew the curtains around his bed. He left him there for a little while to start his inventory of the potions Draco would need.
Draco: Tea and dry toast in the morning. Tea throughout the day, either medicinal or loaded down with calories, depending on which he needs more. Wine or brandy after dinnertime. He almost never eats lunch and rarely actually seeks out dinner, but will make himself eat some of the lighter parts of the meal of whoever corners him into it (so it's usually some cooked vegetables and maybe some fish).
It's genuinely an eating disorder, but I doubt the wizarding world recognises such a thing. He has potions in his rotation that are supposed to get him more appetite and more nutrition from whatever he does eat.
Theo: More of a full-English-breakfast / sandwiches-for-lunch / steak-and-potatoes-dinner guy.
I really want those "questions about your characters" single question posts like you find in the tag #oc-questions , but that I don't feel icky using for not-OCs? I've looked up "muse questions" but those are all big long ask memes really. Alas. 😔
I just thought this would be easier to read, since the other list appears to be broken. This has slightly lesser descriptions and content warnings, but is much neater.
(late 2001) - Lucius has Rowle ❌🖐👪
[Day 20] - 500w
(late 2001) - Draco feels unsafe even though he knows he shouldn't 🧠😰💗💕
[Day 23] - 1600w
(January 2002) - Draco discovers that a recurring dream is actually a memory his parents tried to remove 🧠💫💠💕👪
[Day 29] - 2800w
(2002ish) - Draco is hit with a fear spell during a tournament duel😱💕
[Day 4] - 1800w
(2003) - Draco dreams Theo hurt him, has a psychotic break and loses control of magic 🧠😱🔪🖐💠💕
[Day 17] - 3100w
(2004) - Draco found a way to not have to ever sleep, but it's making him insane and dangerous, and his family have to contain him until it passes. Draco is brutally abusive to them all. 🧠❌💤😥💕👪
[Day 12] - 8500w
(2004) - Draco wakes up in the magical equivalent of surgery 🖐💕
[Day 5] - 700w
(2005ish) - Draco tries to remove the Dark Mark, with a knife 🩸🩸🔪👇
[Day 22] - 2800w
(June 2006) - Draco is not in the mood for a surprise party, does it anyway 🖤😥💗💕
[Day 15] - 1000w
(2007ish) - Draco and Theo are dungeon delving in an old tomb, Draco ends up playing sacrifice for all the trials 🩸💊🌑💕
[Day 28] - 6800w
I'm getting a "there was an error processing your post" error every time I try to edit my Whumptober masterlist, or create a new one, so I'm hoping that fixes itself............ It looks really sad with the description of that last post missing.
For the benefit of Whumptober skimmers: All of these stories take place within the same nearly-canon-compliant Harry Potter AU, the key difference of which is that Voldemort's task to Draco, kill Dumbledore, came with a curse that drained his life until Dumbledore was dead, and left him that way afterward. These stories span time from roughly age 16 to ~40. Draco is whumpee.
"Theo" is Theodore Nott, the ultimate background character of Draco's dorm / Draco's boyfriend it turns out.
Anything listed with "Theo caretaker" is likely to have hints of romance, but anything heavily romantic will have "romantic" in the little warning area. Otherwise it's family feels / friends / professional.
Because these span lot of time, Lucius' characterisation in particular can vary wildly (he's got his own issues). Draco's and Theo's personalities also change, to a greater or lesser degree. Narcissa is eternal.
----------------------------
“But now this room is spinning while I’m trying just to fill in all the gaps.” | Swooning | “How many fingers am I holding up?”
#1 : August 1998 - 1500 words
Draco faints and falls down the stairs while he's off his meds
sickfic // untrustworthy mind // whumpee in denial // Theo caretaker
--
Delirium
#2 : November 1999 - 1000 words
Draco hasn't been sleeping, Lucius gets pissed
abusive parent // untrustworthy mind // passive whumpee // Lucius whumper
--
Solitary confinement
#3 : September 1998 - 700 words
Draco is badly withdrawing and no one notices or helps
depression // caretaker failure
--
“I see the danger, It’s written there in your eyes.” | Shock | “You in there?”
#4 : 2002ish - 1800 words
Draco is hit with a fear curse during a duelling tournament
vulnerable whumpee // whumpee seems normal // Theo caretaker
--
Pinned down | "It's broken."
#5 : 2004 - 700 words
Draco wakes up during the magical equivalent of surgery
medical whump // romantic // Theo caretaker
--
Made to watch | "It should have been me."
#6 : early 2000 - 550 words
Lucius makes Draco see exactly when he's done for him
mind r*pe // cruciatus curse // abusive parent // self-loathing whumpee // Lucius whumpee // Lucius whumper // Voldemort whumper
--
“I paced around for hours on empty; I jumped at the slightest of sounds.” | Radio silence
#7 : August 2000 - 1300 words
Draco has intense anxiety over Theo not coming home
anxiety // romantic // Theo caretaker
--
Outnumbered | "It's all for nothing."
#8 : 1 July 1997 - 1400 words
Draco is bullied by Death Eaters and realises that Dumbledore's death didn't change anything
homophobia
--
Alternate prompt:
Aftermath of Failure
#9 : Easter 1998 - 700 words
Voldemort punishing everyone after Harry & co's escape
cruciatus curse // vomit // Voldemort whumper // Narcissa caretaker
--
Stranded | "You said you'd never leave."
#10 : May 1999 - 2800 words
Draco emotionally cracks and calls Theo back from Hogwarts for help
This story got fluffier than normal and is mostly about recovery rather than suffering
emotional breakdown // vulnerable whumpee // Theo caretaker // Narcissa caretaker // house elf caretaker
--
“All the lights going dark and my hope’s destroyed.” | Captivity | “No one will find you.”
#11 : August 2001 - 800 words
excerpt of Draco kidnapped and tortured by an escaped Death Eater
beating // bondage // torture // kidnapping // captivity // cruciatus curse // numb whumpee // Death Eater whumper
--
“I haven't slept in days, but who's counting?” | Insomnia
#12 : 2004 - 7500 words
Draco has found a concoction that lets him go without sleeping for weeks, but it's making him crazy and dangerous. His family have to keep him contained until it wears off.
Draco is brutally abusive to all 4 caretakers.
captivity // emotional abuse // starvation // sleep deprivation // whumped caretakers // Lucius caretaker // Narcissa caretaker // Theo caretaker // house elf caretaker // Draco whumper
--
Infection | "I don't feel so good."
#13 : September 2000 - 1300 words
Draco falls sick with the flu while he's working on Diagon Alley
sickfic // fever // romantic // Theo caretaker
--
"Feed me poison, fill me 'til I drown." | "Just hold on."
#14 : Easter 2000 - 1900 words
Draco is found having overdosed on some of his medications, insists it was an accident
overdose // suicide attempt (possibly) // vomit // depression // numb whumpee // house elf caretaker // Narcissa caretaker // Lucius caretaker
--
Suppressed Suffering | "I'm fine."
#15 : June 2006 - 1000 words
Draco is not in the mood for a surprise party, but he does it anyway
whumpee seems normal
--
"Would you lie with me and just forget the world?" | "Don't go where I can't follow."
#16 : January 2019 - 900 words
Draco considers becoming a ghost after his death
physical weakness // dying // terminal illness // angst // romantic // Theo caretaker
--
Touch Aversion | "Leave me alone."
#17 : 2003 - 3100 words
Draco dreams Theo hurt him and has a psychotic break, accidentally harms people with unintentional magic
untrustworthy mind // implied noncon // touch aversion // loss of magic control // scared whumpee // Lucius caretaker // Theo caretaker // Theo "whumper"
--
Tortured for Information
#18 : 2012 - 4000 words
Draco is tortured by a client's abusive spouse
torture // blood // gore // evisceration // physical weakness // kidnapping // defiant whumpee // Lucius caretaker // rando whumper
--
"I'll take one final step, all you have to do is make me." | Psychological
#19 : 2009 - 1300 words
Draco encounters a Dementor
suicidal feelings // Theo caretaker
--
"You're going to regret touching him."
#20 : late 2001 - 500 words
Lucius has Rowle
captivity // whumper turned whumpee // caretaker turned whumper // Lucius whumper
--
"Don't move."
#21 : August 1998 - 1000 words
Feeding time for Nagini
human being eaten by animal
--
Alternate Prompt:
Body Modification
#22 : 2005ish - 2800 words
Draco tries to remove the Dark Mark from his arm. With a knife.
gore // blood // self-harm // self mutilation // vomit (lite) // self whump // house elf caretaker
--
"It's gonna get me by the end of the night." | Shadows | Stalking | "Who's there?"
#23 : late 2001 - 1600 words
Draco feels unsafe even though he knows he shouldn't
anxiety // mental health problems // romantic // Theo caretaker
--
Neglect
#24 : August 2001 - 1200 words
Draco has to create his own water while he's being held captive.
dehydration // bondage // captivity // neglect // degradation // whumper not present // Death Eater whumper
--
Storm
#25 : August 2001 - 500 words
Draco experiences a storm while held captive by Rowle
isolation // captivity // bondage // Death Eater whumper
--
"Sometimes I get so tired, I don't even know myself."
#26 : June 2000 - 1300 words
Draco's inability to sleep properly
sleep deprivation // night terrors // romantic // Theo caretaker
--
Scars | "Let me see."
#27 : late 1998 - 1100 words
Narcissa sees Draco's Sectumsempra scar
body image issues // shame
--
Sacrifice
#28 : 2007ish - 6800 words
Theo and Draco are exploring a tomb in search of forbidden knowledge, and Draco plays the role of sacrifice for all of the trials
blood // blood loss // self harm (bloodletting) // zombies // caretaker failure // Theo caretaker
--
“I only sink deeper the deeper I think.” | Troubled Past Resurfacing | “What happened to me?”
#29 : January 2002 - 2800 words
Draco discovers a recurring dream is actually a memory his parents Obliviated out of his mind
untrustworthy mind // lashing out // angry whumpee // Theo caretaker // Lucius caretaker // Narcissa caretaker // Voldemort whumper
--
“It’s okay, just to say, ‘I’m not okay’.” | Bridal Carry | “Not much longer…”
#30 : January 2020 - 2100 words
Draco shuts down his Diagon Alley office and has to put his affairs in order, is too weak to probably ever leave home again
dying // terminal illness // physical weakness // angst // Theo caretaker
Easter 2001 - "I thought that I was getting better."
((Content warning: PTSD, depression))
((Promptspiration:
@whumptober-archive 2023: day 31:
I thought that I was getting better. / Emptiness / Setbacks ))
Genre: angst
Romance level: some
Angst level: 4/5
Draco's headspace: self-critical
((words: ~900))
------------------------------------
Theo lost track of Draco in Gringotts; when he was done with his teller he realised Draco wasn't behind him where he had been, spent a minute looking around, and found he wasn't at another window, not that he expected him to be. He was just gone.
He was sure he would have told him if he was going to his vault. Maybe he'd gotten bored…? That wasn't necessarily unlike him, but to just act on it? Maybe when he was in one of his better, more playful moods, but he hadn't been recently. He scanned the huge room again and then left through the front doors, looking sharply around him, not quite yet worried, but prepared to be.
He still almost missed Draco, because he was leaning against one of the columns at the end of the bank's façade in a narrow ray of sunlight, facing up the street and away from everyone. He had a very long, thin look about him today, emphasised by going back to wearing black, and he was staring toward the skyline, gripping his elbows tightly.
He came up beside him silently and subtly put his hand on his back; they were almost hidden by the column, so Draco didn't have to worry about anyone seeing them.
Draco didn't even look at him. "I had to go," he said, still staring at nothing. "I was seeing dead goblins."
"What Voldemort did?" Draco nodded once, and he rubbed his back. It was that time of year, with the students back for Easter break, and that seemed to always bring out Draco's worst memories of Voldemort. He still wouldn't really talk about them, but this wasn't that different from the last time he had been with him around Easter: he started getting withdrawn a couple weeks beforehand, he became preoccupied with the memories, and then eventually something gave out.
"I thought I was getting better," Draco said, staring toward the sunset. "I should be getting better." His voice was tight with frustration. He lifted one of his hands from his arm to push back his hair, and once it was free of its tight grip, he could see how it was shaking. "I'm not at home so I don't have to see it everyday, I'm not around my father so I'm not under all that pressure. I have people around me and I keep busy so I'm not thinking about it all the time, I'm sleeping as much as I can, I'm not drinking, I'm practising my Occlumency for control without going all the way to trying to repress it all. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be, so why is this still happening? What else should I be doing?"
"I don't know if it works like that, Draco. Maybe there's not instructions you can follow that can fix bad memories like that."
Draco closed his eyes and laid his head back against the column. "I give up," he said quietly. "I've tried doing what I was supposed to, I've tried pretending nothing's changed and doing the same things I always did, I've tried trying, and nothing works. It wins. If I could afford enough Draught of the Living Death, I would just sleep until July. Or just keep sleeping…"
He hated hearing that. He was just so defeated by his own mind. "Don't think like that," he urged, rubbing his back, wishing Draco would let him hold him instead. "Getting better doesn't mean no bad days, right? Maybe 'getting better' just means that you don't bury it all until it explodes this time. That's still real progress."
"Not enough."
He took a chance and ran his hand up Draco's arm, working his fingers underneath Draco's to hold his hand. Draco allowed it, and even relaxed his grip slightly for his sake. "The only other thing you 'should' be doing is being kinder to yourself. What good is it staying away from your dad if you're just going to push and berate yourself the same way? Give yourself the credit you deserve."
Draco pulled his hand away and turned toward the street. "I don't want to talk about this."
"Because you know, if you say what you really think, you'll sound petulant and like you're insulting yourself for attention or just to be contrary, but you don't feel good enough to say what you know you should?"
"...Something like that."
"All right. Can you just do one thing, and admit that you handled the situation well?"
"By freaking out in public?" he said bitterly.
"By recognising you were having a bad reaction, and leaving the situation before it actually got worse. And then you didn't run away, you waited for me. See, there are so many ways it could have been worse, but you did the right things to handle it."
"I guess," he murmured.
Not enthusiastic, but getting him to admit it at all was a triumph. It was something he could feel okay about himself for, which was a start. He set his hand on Draco's back and stepped down the stairs beside him. "I want some ice cream. Will you come?"
"All right." Draco followed a step behind him.
Almost all the way to Fortescue's, he looked back. "Hey, Draco?"
"Mm."
"It's okay. And it's going to be okay."
Draco dropped his eyes without a word, but discreetly reached up and held his hand.
((Promptspiration:
@whumptober-archive 2023: day 30:
It's okay, just to say, I'm not okay. / Bridal carry / "Not much longer..." ))
Genre: angst
Romance level: major
Angst level: 5/5
Draco's headspace: tragic
((words: ~2100))
------------------------------------
Supervising the packing of his office was a heavy weight, but it was time. Draco hadn't been out of the house in nearly a month; he couldn't take the floo alone anymore, nor could he make it past the anti-Disapparition wards, or reliably Apparate even if he could. It had been at least six months since he spent a full day here, or anywhere that wasn't nearby his bed.
He was running out of time. If he didn't close up his office now, it would be left for his parents, and he didn't want to do that to them.
Theo had offered to handle it for him, but he didn't want that; he had a feeling like it was his responsibility to bear witness. He had been there when it was decorated and opened for business, and he should be there now, when it was closed and packed away. He should be the bookends on his own life.
He sat behind the desk, covered now with a cloth, holding his tea in front of him where the medicinal steam could help him breathe, watching the pair of movers pack away the final odds and ends from his shelves. The room was bare. Almost twenty years of accumulated trophies and detritus of living, packed now neatly into a few boxes stacked beside the door. The portrait frame connected to his father's study was propped beside them, empty for the moment, to be taken in the last trip.
Theo was directing the transfer of the boxes back to the manor through the floo, prowling the office's rooms to check every nook and cranny for a dropped paper or forgotten trinket. Behind him and the packers, an animated broom was sweeping up a pile of broken quills, paper scraps, and dust dragged out of every crevice and corner. A bent chocolate frog card topped the pile of refuse like a sad crown.
Draco watched another box being sealed and carried from the room, and turned his attention out the window behind his desk, looking through the sheer curtains out onto his terrace. He could only see the impression of Diagon Alley, not the details.
He wanted to see it. It had been so long.
He took a deep drink of the tea and set it far back on the covered desk, then, after a moment of bracing himself, pushed himself up from the chair. He had to hold himself up on the desk with his eyes closed for a long moment, breathing slowly as his head swam, and his arms trembled by the time he was able to lift his head without fear of losing his balance or his tenuous grip on consciousness. It took him another moment on his unsteady legs before he was able to draw his wand and cast the spell to float above the ground.
Moving himself slowly from the desk to the doorway and letting his hand brush over the wall to keep himself steady, he moved out to the reception room. The movers shifted aside to make space for him as they shuffled back to grab more boxes and bring them to the floo.
Theo looked over as he came out, instantly attentive, and moved to take his arm and help him. "Something wrong?"
"No." He squeezed his arm gently. "I'll just be a moment." He nodded to the front door.
"All right." Theo escorted him until they reached the portal, and then went back to his supervising, giving him privacy.
It was dreary outside, pearly white overcast spitting occasional snowflakes with a stiff breeze. The moment the door was open, he was greeted by the sudden noise of the street like a balm to his soul. It wasn't a busy day, a weekday in the middle of of January, but there were people moving, maybe a dozen in pairs and small clusters talking amongst themselves, a solitary wizard in a purple cloak and hat hurrying furtively toward Knockturn Alley, a pregnant witch wrangling a small child away from the bakery on her errands. He could hear silverware and discussion wafting over the road from Mastry's restaurant, and when the doors opened briefly there was a burst of spirited uproar — there was Quidditch on the wireless, he surmised.
"Draco, you're back!" Madam Ophelia from the stationery shop two doors down over the road came out, waving, and crossed the street to him. "Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes, love, it's been an age."
"A month, anyway," he agreed with the softness of his weak breath, and a smile. "How are you?"
"Oh, it's fine, nothing ever changes here, does it?"
"Some things," he denied mildly. He looked up at the small sign jutting out from his building front, bearing only a stylised white outline of a peacock that he liked to think stood out from the riot of signage on the Alley by virtue of its elegant simplicity, and levitated it down to his hands.
"No," she gasped in that gossipy way he so enjoyed, "you're closing?"
"It's time."
"It can't be. Here now." She waved down the street. It was a slow time on a slow day; fully half of the shopkeeps were probably waiting more for something gossipworthy to happen than for customers right now, peering out their front windows over tea, and Ophelia was such a good niffler for anything of interest. Merlin knew he had spent enough of his own afternoons on his terrace doing the same, and he would be right there to hear what she had found under normal circumstances. The utter banality of it gave him a nostalgic smile. She was waving now to Alexandros the barber who had poked his head out of his shop. "Draco's closing up," she called.
"Is he." Alexandros hurried down to join them.
A couple minutes saw a half dozen of his fellows congregated around the front of his shop, and Draco basked, letting it wash around him — not so much the attention, although the attention certainly never hurt, but in the chatter, the flow of conversation that it was so easy to fall into. He was tired from standing long before he was tired of talking, and he ignored it to indulge himself in the social interaction.
They politely talked around his illness, and an eavesdropper might have got the impression he was going away on a long holiday. The conversation was well padded with gossip from the rest of the Alley, just the perfect amount of conversation that could include him instead of focusing on him, like this was just another scrap of mildly interesting life, and he appreciated it.
"What are you going to do with your office?" was asked, just after a bit of talk about Alexandros' daughter's latest romantic catastrophe.
"Draco Malfoy Memorial Museum," he quipped without a thought, to general laughter. "Actually, there's been no decision yet. It may stand empty for some time." In reality, that would be up to his parents, and he wouldn't be surprised if neither of them wanted to deal with it, but there was no reason not to convert something as valuable as Diagon Alley property to the family fortune. They may appreciate it someday.
"That's for the best," Ophelia said, and a couple others nodded.
"This is your space. It wouldn't be right for someone else to try to take it over."
"I appreciate that, all of you," he said, with genuine feeling, and looked down at the sign in his hands. He ran his fingers lightly over the lines of the peacock carved into the smooth wood. Then with his wand he wrote above it "Closed for Good", the words carved into the wood and standing out in white to match the bird, and a performative impulse made him write "It's been an honour" beneath it as well. He looked at it a moment more, then he focused on levitating it back through the nearly-closed door and through the waiting room to prop it against the inside of the window.
Someone patted the back of his shoulder firmly.
—
Draco came back inside; the bell jingled over his head, and Theo looked up from the inventory list he was signing off on. "Okay?"
Draco nodded and reached for Theo's hand, and found it there waiting for him. "I'm ready to go."
"All right." Theo handed off the parchment and helped him to the fireplace, and held him tight against his side with Draco's face buried in his neck, making sure Draco's eyes were closed, to minimise the effect of the spinning and tumultuous visions of the floo on his vertigo. On the other side, he had to basically carry him out of the fire and helped him sit so he could catch his breath and fight down the nausea.
"Is this good?" He ran his hand over Draco's hair. "There's just a little left to do at the office."
Draco nodded. "Go ahead." A glass of water had appeared by the magic of house elf, and he picked it up to sip and settle his stomach. "I'm going to go upstairs."
"Wait a moment and I'll be back to help you."
"It's all right, I can make it." He squeezed Theo's hand on his shoulder.
"All right." He gave him a light kiss. "I'll be right back." He tossed floo powder into the fire, called out for Draco's office, and vanished.
Draco gave himself another couple minutes to rest, then took out his wand and floated his chair out of the drawing room, conserving his energy. His thoughts were distant as his eyes passed over the boxes stacked in the hall, his things that would need to be moved upstairs or packed up, sold or stored, given away or destroyed. It would be a kindness for him to handle that. But not today; he was worn out from the trip to Diagon Alley.
He left the chair at the bottom of the stairs and tested out standing. Moving with a measured slowness, he could hold the lightheadedness at bay, although he could feel how just the strain of being upright made his heart struggle. The act of climbing stairs was torturously deliberate; push himself up the step physically, float the length of it with his hand on the bannister to keep him steady or help pull him along, stand on his feet on the other end, repeat the entire process, a little bit slower this time…
He stopped to catch his breath halfway up, and in looking up the staircase it seemed to stretch away to infinity; he realised he didn't have the energy to lift his feet again once he stopped moving. It was all he could do to hold himself up, but even that was ultimately asking too much of his body. His wasted hand didn't have the strength to grip the bannister. He sank to his knees on the stair with a shaky breath.
—
Theo found Draco kneeling halfway up the stairs, looking at the carpet in front of him, breaths slow and even, but shallow and tremulous. He immediately came up and crouched beside him, running his hand over the back of Draco's hair, as much for his own benefit as to comfort him, and twitched up Draco's sleeve to check the cuff that measured his heartbeat. It wasn't especially bad; this wasn't a spell that made him collapse, he just needed to rest. He rubbed his back and gently lifted his strengthless hand off the railing to help him up.
Draco's hand gripped his weakly. "I can't." Draco's voice was a broken near-whisper, and the words stabbed him in the heart.
He wrapped his arms around Draco and held him as tightly as he dared. He was so frail against his chest he felt like he would break him if he wasn't careful for even a moment. "I know," he murmured into his hair, voice thick. He had tried so hard, fought for so long, and now he had nothing left, and couldn't deny it any longer. Willpower wasn't enough anymore.
Draco turned his face into his shoulder, weakly holding onto the front of his robes, and he made the impulsive decision to lift him in his arms. He should have levitated him if Draco couldn't find the strength to move himself, but he didn't weigh enough to be a burden. He held Draco's hand with the same arm supporting his shoulders, and carried him the rest of the way up the stairs they both knew he wouldn't descend again under his own power.
((Content warning: mental manipulation, mind invasion (mentioned), false / repressed / erased memories, loss of autonomy))
((Promptspiration:
@whumptober-archive 2023: day 29:
I only sink deeper, the deeper I think / Troubled past resurfacing / "What happened to me?" ))
Genre: whump
Romance level: minor
Angst level: 4/5
Draco's headspace: anger / fear -> vicious -> fatalistic
((words: ~2800))
------------------------------------
Theo was watching Draco more closely than he normally had to; it had been clear to him for a while that something was weighing on him, but he was trusting in Draco to mention it if he needed to. He didn't want to talk about it, and he seemed to be handling it well enough, though mostly by throwing himself into work; he hadn't even been home in four or five days. It wasn't impairing his ability to function, so Theo didn't push, but he was there if he needed him, and he watched.
Watching so closely was how he was able, when he followed Draco through the floo, to catch the end of the subtle motion of him pulling his sleeve down to hide the flashing alarm of his heart monitor. "Draco?" He touched his back.
"Hm?" Draco looked back and up at him, casual, hiding that there was anything to acknowledge.
"What is it?"
"There's nothing."
He caught Draco's hand before he could pull away and pushed back his sleeve. The alarm was still flickering in reflection of his dangerously fast heartbeat. "Whatever this has been, it isn't getting better. Let me help."
Draco looked away and pushed his sleeve back down. "It's fine. I know it's in my head."
"Has it been getting worse?" The way Draco didn't answer or look at him confirmed it. "Tell me."
Draco glanced at him, eyes slightly narrowed, but he had made a promise to answer that phrase, and he kept it. His eyes flicked around the room. "I've been having the same dream for… months. It's getting more detailed, and I've started having… flashes… of it, while I'm awake, especially in this room." He ran his hand through his hair and gripped the back of his neck, briefly. Then he shook his hand out and he appeared composed again. "But as I said, I can handle it."
May as well get out of that room, then. Theo led the way from the drawing room with a hand on Draco's back. "What is it?"
"It's Death Eaters… It doesn't matter. It's just that it keeps coming back." He took out his potion bag as they walked. "I think I'll go to sleep until dinnertime tomorrow," he said, and took out a Dreamless Sleep potion, holding it to the light to gauge how many hours it would last for.
—
"You're wanted downstairs."
Theo wasn't used to being addressed by the portraits, especially with such purpose, and he had to blink up at it to be sure it was actually talking to him. It was the Elizabethan Malfoy portrait that Draco called his father's spy, now sharing a frame with an old woman that Theo had never bothered to ask the identity of, and that made sense. It was also looking impatient with him for delaying.
"Right. His office?"
"The master study, yes."
When he made his way to Lucius' office — sorry, study — both of Draco's parents were there, him sitting at the desk and her beside it facing her husband, looking very much like he was walking in on a serious conversation, and the way they both looked over at him was decidedly uncomfortable.
"You've no practical experience with Memory Charms, have you?" Lucius said with no preamble.
"No…"
"Might I suggest you acquire it. In the meantime," he pushed a business card across the desk, "arrange a pretext for him to visit her." He looked at the name on the card, and then glanced back up for an explanation. "An Obliviator of particular discretion."
He glanced at the portrait behind Lucius' desk, now observing; he didn't have to ask how Draco's father knew anything, no doubt it had been eavesdropping when they came home. Obviously his parents knew something Draco didn't, something that troubled them. "Then you're saying he's not dreaming?"
"I'm saying that if you mean to help him, this is what you'll do."
The door swung open and hit the wall solidly. Draco was wearing a narrow expression of fury that made him look sharp. "No — answer the question, Father."
"Draco—"
"Because it didn't." His voice had started low and clipped, but as he came closer it got higher, as anger gave way to something less controlled. His hands clenched in tight white balls. "That never happened!"
"You're right!" Lucius had to raise his voice to get through to him over his own yelling. "It isn't a real memory."
"Then what is it?" he demanded. "What do you know? Why do I keep thinking of… of…"
His parents exchanged a look that would have been subtle outside this house but was a yell to people accustomed to speaking their language. "Just get rid of it," his mother said. "Don't worry about it."
"No! Tell me! Tell me what happened to me!"
"The Dark Lord did it," Lucius said flatly. "Gave you a memory that never happened. Punishment for your failures, and your… proclivities."
"No…" He took a step backward, pulling away. "He can't — he couldn't —"
"He took amusement in giving his victims such visions they would wish they were dead, at times. When he wanted to truly make them suffer before he killed them. Or, occasionally, in lieu of killing them, when he could still use them."
Draco gripped the back of his neck so tightly his fingernails were going to draw blood. "When? I don't— I would know…"
"The first night."
"No. No, I passed out when you were Crucioing me, and that's it."
"No," Theo said quietly. "I've seen that memory… that's not what happened. Voldemort did do something, and you started… you had a bad reaction."
Draco's eyes jerked from Theo back to his parents, flicking between them before focusing on his father. "And so you Obliviated me? You just decided to take my memories? What right—"
His mother interrupted. "I did."
If they thought that would temper his anger, that he couldn't be angry with his mother, they badly miscalculated. "Of course it was you!" he exploded. "Who else could it be? Who else thinks that my mind is their plaything besides you and Lord Voldemort? Now getting rid of my inconvenient emotions wasn't good enough. Why even stop at memories? Why not just root around and pull things out until you actually fix me? Maybe you can even make me like women and not have to deal with a fucking fairy—"
"Don't speak to your mother that way," Lucius ordered him. She was bearing Draco's outburst stoically, but she had crossed her arms. "The Dark Lord—"
"Stop calling him that, you sycophant, there's no one here to impress."
Lucius' eyes narrowed. "Voldemort left little option. You couldn't keep that. No one had any way of knowing you would be this fragile."
He was trying to reason with Draco; that was the wrong tactic. There was no point trying use logic with him when he was in full attack mode — he wasn't interested in the truth or working anything out, he was just lashing out to hurt people as deeply as possible. Anything they said would just be turned into more ammunition for him to turn back on them.
"What else did you take?" Draco demanded. "How much more?"
"Nothing," his mother said firmly.
"I don't believe you." He looked like he was realising this as he said it, and he backed away. "But I'll never know, will I?" The cuff on his wrist started flashing.
Theo stepped forward, arm out between them to try to steer him back. "Draco, you need to calm down," he started. He didn't get to go any further; Draco raised his hand and clenched it without even really looking at him, and then he had the disturbing sensation of his mouth being fused together, pressing his tongue flat as his teeth disappeared and he had no lips to open. He backed off, groping at it and fumbling for his wand.
"You can't just do this to me!" Draco screamed at his parents. "Stay out of my mind! It's broken and it's shitty but it's mine and you don't get to touch it! I'm not an extension of you for you to pose like a doll and dress up like you like. If that's what you want, go have another kid, if you think between you you can scrape together enough emotion for another human being — maybe you can raise them right this time, and you can have what you always wanted, and leave me alone!"
And then he was gone, slamming the door behind him, with his magic instead of his hands. The silence felt deafening. Draco was a storm, at times, sweeping through, overwhelming, irresistible, leaving destruction in his wake when he moved on. It was awesome to behold, but being caught in it left you miserable and disoriented. Theo was relieved to have only been hit by the edge of the blast directed at his parents. That was exhausting enough.
Theo finally ended Draco's curse on him in the calm after he'd left, watching the door, and thoughtfully put his wand away.
"A while ago, I actually suggested modifying his memory to get rid of his dreams," he said. "To make it easier. He made a pretty convincing argument that it would drive him mad if he knew he couldn't trust his mind."
His parents didn't respond. His mother turned her back to the door and stared into the fire. It was quiet for a minute.
"The solution seems pretty clear," the portrait noted. "Have the old memory removed, and the memory of this. Perhaps try to do it better this time."
"Not helpful," Lucius said, tone annoyed. The portrait sniffed.
In another minute, Theo silently left the room to see if he could find him.
—
It took Theo some time to find Draco, because the last place he would have expected to find him was the drawing room, the scene of whatever false memory had been haunting his dreams. He only found him there when he had come to the conclusion that Draco had left and was on his way to follow him.
"Draco." He couldn't help the tinge of relief in his voice. Draco hadn't even taken his favourite chair, he was just sitting in the middle of a sofa with his elbows resting on his knees.
He came to put his hand on Draco's shoulder, but Draco reached up to knock his hand away before he could touch him. "I'm fine," Draco said, and spread his hands to show how he wasn't crying, or sick, or caught deep down in his thoughts, or exploding with rage. "You can go report to your masters that I'm not tearing down the house around their ears."
"I didn't come for them." He sat down beside him, but didn't touch. "I work for you, remember?"
"Sure." He clasped his hands between his knees again.
Theo studied the firelight flickering over his distant expression. "Are you actually okay?"
"If I say 'no', what are you going to do? Cheering Charm to make me be happy? Numbing Hex so I don't care? Sleeping Charm so I'll sleep it off? Obliviate away the memory of tonight?"
"Just talking," Theo said patiently.
Draco looked distantly into the fire. "Now I know my mother has done every one of those things, and probably more that she didn't think I needed to be aware of."
"Cheering Charm? That doesn't really sound like her."
"I was a happy kid, but not always. I guess when I was little that was the easiest way to deal with it when I got sulky." He gripped his hands tighter. "But at least that was temporary. This is an irreversible change."
He kneaded his hands together, hard, absently pressing his thumb along the bones of his hand like he was going to force them out.
"I can't trust them ever again," he said distantly. "Even if I want to, I can't. How could I?"
"They were helping. You might not like what they did, but you know why they did it."
"That's right," Draco said acidly. "I guess that proves I can trust them, all of you, to do one thing: whatever you think is best, whether that means you're doing something for me or about me or to me. And what I want doesn't matter."
"Why are you including me in that? Are you saying you can't trust me, either?"
"Don't pretend like you weren't going to do what he said."
"Seeing this…" He searched Draco's drawn face. "Yeah, I'd have thought about it, at least. Is it doing you any good to remember? Because it looks like it's just hurting you."
"It's not remembering that's hurting me. I think I could have dealt with that memory… It's so far beyond awful, I want to be sick, but I think I could have handled it, eventually. Especially knowing it wasn't real." He bowed his head over his knees and gripped the back of it with both hands. "It's… Now, every dream I have, I have to wonder, is that another torture memory he forced into my head? Or even something that really happened that they tried to erase? Every memory I can't get out of my head, I have to wonder if it happened, or did he put it there? How much of what I know is real? Everything that happened… is that really how it went? After what I think is the end, is there more I was made to forget? Did I do things I don't know, that were erased 'for my own good'?"
Theo could see how Draco's quick mind was working against him. The moment he was introduced to the first problem, that his dream was a memory, his mind immediately jumped ahead to find the second and third layers of the problem without pausing to process any of it. He didn't have time to come to terms with one thing at a time; it all piled on him at once.
"Has this started coming back before?" Draco wondered blankly toward his knees. "And they got me Obliviated before I could remember completely? …Have I learned this before and they had that memory erased, too?"
"I really don't think so."
"But that's the point, isn't it? You don't actually know. And neither do I. I never can. For the rest of my life, I'll never know…"
Theo set his hand on Draco's back, and Draco let him this time. He rubbed his back slowly, but Draco wasn't tense; he was loose, defeated, almost limp.
"I don't know what to do," Draco admitted quietly.
"I think the first thing is really just to sleep. This might seem less overwhelming if you get some decent rest, and you can think about it better in the morning." If he'd just gone to sleep when he'd said he was going to, he wouldn't have noticed Theo coming downstairs, he wouldn't have followed, he wouldn't have heard any of this… He wouldn't be having to deal with this. If only he'd done that, if only Theo had checked that he'd done it, this could all have been avoided.
Draco didn't answer for a moment. "Not here," he finally said, dully. "Everything here is memories. I'll go back to my office."
"Or to my house."
Draco thought about it, then nodded. Theo felt a tiny knot in his chest unclench; what that meant was that, no matter what he said, Draco did still trust him.
"Can I come with you?"
"Do whatever you want… it's not like I could stop you."
"Tell me 'no' and I won't," he said patiently.
"You don't get how that's not the same." Draco pushed himself to his feet. "Yes. You can come."
"All right. Go ahead, I have to get something."
"Tell my parents, you mean?" Draco said. "Don't bother." He pointed over and up the wall without looking, and only then did Theo see the Elizabethan portrait sharing a frame with a witch on a horse.
"No, I really do have to get my stuff, but I'll be right behind you."
Draco nodded without answering and through floo powder into the fire to take him to Theo's house.
Theo sat back with a sigh, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. "I'll try to bring him back tomorrow," he said in a minute to the portrait, since now he didn't have to actually find Draco's parents now. "If he's not okay, I'll let you know."
Then he went upstairs to get his books and join Draco.
((Promptspiration:
@whumptober-archive 2023: day 28:
Sacrifice ))
Genre: action-adventure (they are dungeon diving)
Romance level: some
Angst level: 2/5
Draco's headspace: fine -> angry / determined -> out of it
((words: ~6800))
((Part 2 here))
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Theo raised his lit wand so that the shine of it fell on the rough stone walls. They were inside one of those ancient wizard tombs he spent some of his free time exploring; he'd invited Draco along because the puzzle lock to open this one required two people. The very intricacy of the defences encouraged him; this was supposedly the tomb of Aethelmaer the Congelator, a 'lost alchemist', the type referred to only obliquely in old texts, one of the pioneers of human alchemy.
The walls were fairly covered with writing, so that it looked almost like the inside of the Hogwarts Charms classroom where centuries of students had scrawled their names. This wasn't in the Latin alphabet, though, which made it look terribly esoteric and rather mad, if you couldn't read it.
"I bet you wish you took Ancient Runes now, don't you?" he pointed out playfully.
"I know, it's dreadful," Draco drawled, looking around behind him. "If only I'd hired on someone who did."
He chuckled and walked the edge of the room, making notes and letting Draco take over the light. "None of it's very interesting," he assured him. "Bog standard tomb ranting of a powerful wizard who felt slighted by his contemporaries."
"I notice I don't see a body."
"No, you won't. This is the antechamber, there's not much out here but the offering bowl." He pointed to a stone bowl on a pedestal in the centre of the back wall. "In a lot of these tombs, we'd have a passage back, but it appears to be hidden here, likely a secret door. I expect at least one more serious test before we reach the burial chamber and whatever secrets he took to his grave. Usually we'll be talking about mechanical traps — blades on springs, that sort of thing — or logic puzzles, maybe some spell work, like treasure chests hidden behind walls, activating braziers, pressure plates keyed to specifically enchanted stone blocks…"
"It's times like this I am reminded I'm only a side character in a very interesting biography being written about you," Draco said fondly.
He chuckled again, a little embarrassed, and went to look at the offering bowl.
The stone door behind them slammed shut; they both whirled at the sound, but no one was fast enough to stop it. The darkness outside the feeble circle of Draco's wandlight became absolute.
After a moment, Draco said, "Does this normally happen?"
"Not normally, no. But that's a good sign, if you think about it… Normally I don't find anything all that interesting, either." Theo lit his wand and went back to the door. "There's a message here…"
"Well don't keep us in suspense."
It still took him a moment more to translate, and he frowned at the door runes, brushing dust out of the carvings and double-checking what he saw. "'Find what you seek, or guard it forever'."
"Is that as ominous in 'ancient esoteric' as it sounds in English?" Draco brought his light up to Theo's side to look as well.
Theo glanced down at him. "Well, it's not… not ominous… But ominous is also encouraging, if you're looking for forbidden knowledge. Look around, let's see if we can find the mechanism for the door."
"Why don't I just open it?" Draco considered the door, making some calculations, and cast a stone transfiguration spell to open them a portal.
And nothing happened. He tapped the stone door with his wand, listening to the sound of it. "Theodore?" he asked, perhaps too calmly.
Theo looked at him, then raised his wand to look at the writing on the walls. "You remember that there was a mediaeval faction of hardline alchemists who considered transfiguration an impure bastard art?"
"Let me guess…"
"...Yeah. I'd be very surprised if everything involved in his tomb weren't transfiguration-proof. Especially if there's a test or a trick to it, he'd have wanted to make sure that it couldn't be passed by 'cheating' with transfiguration."
"You bring me to the nicest places," Draco sighed. "Just so we're clear, you did remember that I am a Transfiguration specialist when you planned this outing, didn't you?"
"In my defence, I didn't expect to be stuck inside." He rubbed Draco's back between the shoulders. "Let's find the door mechanism the old-fashioned way."
Theo went to start searching the wall beside the door, and behind him he heard Draco say 'Revelio'. "Transfiguration," he reminded him without looking back.
"Oh, do fuck off." Draco went the other direction from the door with his wand lit. "Next time, I request the tomb of a master transfigurer who hated alchemy."
"I'll do my best."
They worked their way out from the door, searching methodically. Theo found some ancient lamps he could bring back to life, and then they had some dim firelight to search by.
Maybe ten minutes later he was searching the back alcove when he heard Draco over at the offering bowl. "There's an alchemical symbol in here." He turned to see him wiping ages of dirt and cobwebs from the bowl, peering at the bottom in the the light of his wand. "It's 'blood', isn't it?"
Theo left the wall and joined him. He was expecting maybe a scratchy inscription, or a long border of semi-decorative esoteric symbology. What he found was a clear, deeply-carved single symbol in the centre of the bowl's bottom. "It is," he said thoughtfully, and looked back up at the walls. The writing on the walls was about power and alchemy, three parts textbook and two parts manifesto to one part oblique prophecy. It didn't fit with the elegant asceticism of a single symbol and negative space.
"I saw something like this." He went back to the alcove and dusted off the wall, and found the symbol he'd vaguely noticed while looking. "It's the same one, blood." He looked back at Draco, debating if he should say anything.
Draco met his eyes, then put his wand to his left hand and drew a line over his palm. Squeezing his fist, a small stream of blood trickled onto the centre of the bowl. A magical red glow lit the symbol in the bowl, and was echoed in the one on the wall. At the same time, the wall made a brief grinding noise, and dirt rained down from the top of it.
"It's a door," Theo realised, and then realised it was so obvious that saying it was annoying. And then he realised it had stopped without actually moving. "It needs more." His mouth reported the observation without stopping to give him time to notice what he was saying, and he immediately regretted it. "Don't."
"This isn't alchemy…" Draco said, raising his eyes to look directly at him with quiet horror. "This is Dark magic. What have you been researching?"
"He was an alchemist." He came back to the bowl with him. "But you know that in those days the lines we have now didn't really exist. It was just a tool."
"Stop it with the bullshit, Nott," Draco snapped. At the sound of his surname, he took a breath and straightened up. "Have you or have you not been practising Dark magic?"
"I would allow," he started slowly, trying to fit together an explanation that was diplomatic enough to mitigate Draco's anger, "that I have been following lines of inquiry which, incidentally, lead to Dark magic…"
Draco sneered the full force of his disgust at him and turned a cold shoulder on him, focusing on the bowl. "Well now I'm the one that's going to suffer for your 'lines of inquiry'."
"Wait, Draco—." He held his shoulder to pull him back. "This wasn't supposed to be that. It's my fault, I'll pay the price—"
He shrugged off his hand roughly. "It's got to be me, doesn't it? When it comes down to it, I don't know alchemy and I'm not going to do Dark magic, so if there are other tests, we need you to do them." He pulled back his sleeve and lifted his wand to his arm.
Theo caught his wand hand. "Wait. Healing magic…"
"Caught in the transfiguration suppression, I assume?" Draco predicted coldly.
"His specialty was human alchemy. That's what I'm looking for—"
"And the research that got him erased from history as a dangerous heretic, one assumes."
There wasn't even a use in addressing that. He wasn't wrong, but that was the point. "Yes, there's probably something here suppressing healing magic."
"Unless you can see a way to open the front door without playing his games, I don't see what good that information does me. It's not as though we can choose not to."
"Just give us a few more minutes to look before you go there. We can still get the door open."
"All right." Draco lowered his wand. "Go on then. Maybe we missed something by the door."
"All right." He rubbed Draco's arm, but it was still clear by his lack of response that he wasn't in the mood. He gave it a squeeze and pulled away, hurrying back to the door to look over the inscription again. It was eight hundred years old, if anything maybe at least they could force the mechanism…
He was intently studying the opening of the tomb when he heard a grinding behind him, and it took several seconds for the noise to register on his mind. When he realised what it was he jerked around, to find Draco's arm pouring blood into the offering bowl, and the back alcove wall slowly grinding away from the floor, pulling gradually up into the ceiling in a shower of dirt and ancient dust.
"What are you doing? Stop!" He ran over and grabbed Draco's arm, but he resisted and Theo had the presence of mind, maybe only barely, to not risk hurting him by overpowering him to yank it away.
"Let me know when it's high enough for you to get through," Draco said coolly. "I'd prefer to spend as little blood as possible." The cut along the bottom of his forearm wasn't deep or all that large, but it let out a steady stream of thin blood, and Draco's condition meant it wasn't going to stop bleeding until he got medical attention. He had blood-clotting potions with him, which would have helped, if he didn't keep his potion bag stored shrunken to pocket-sized.
"Damn it, Draco, you didn't have to do that."
"In my experience, yes, I did. You're just wasting your time looking for a way out."
"We have so many other options. We haven't even tried breaking down the door or disabling the suppression enchantments."
"Just get through the door." He watched the blood flowing.
Theo silently watched the door grinding upward, slowly rubbing Draco's shoulder. Eight inches above the floor, a foot…
And it stalled there. It continued making the sound but the door shuddered in place without rising any higher. Draco might have been able to squeeze under that gap, albeit not comfortably, but he knew he couldn't. "There's something wrong," he murmured, squeezed Draco's shoulder, and went to see if he could figure it out. "The mechanism, maybe…"
"No," Draco said distantly, watching the offering bowl. "The blood is gradually draining away. Or being absorbed, maybe. Either way, it needs to be filled fast enough to outpace it." He lifted his wand and sliced his arm again before Theo could get back to him. His face remained impassive, but a spurt of blood hit the wall, and he turned his arm to bleed into the bowl. The flow of blood was much thicker and faster now.
And it worked. The door started to rise again, quicker now, making perceptible progress.
He was torn; everything in him said to rip Draco away from there and make him stop hurting himself, get him out of here and take care of him… but rationally, Draco was right. There might have been another way out, if they had time, but they didn't, now. The only guaranteed way out was through.
He looked down and found the door three feet off the ground. "That's enough," he said. "Stop."
Draco glanced over to judge for himself, and then folded his arm and stepped back. He severed his left sleeves without a word; that exposed the Dark Mark on his arm, which was going to make him even more unhappy. He tied his shirt sleeve above his elbow to act as a tourniquet; as soon as Theo realised that was what he was doing, he came to help, and tied the robe sleeve as a bandage around the cuts. Neither would stop the bleeding entirely, but they should work together to minimise it until they could get out of here. "All right?"
"Let's go."
Theo lit his wand again for light and took the lead going under the door, then helped pull Draco through and back to his feet. Draco folded his arm tightly and lifted it above his heart while he looked around.
"Stay behind me," Theo said absently, lifting his lit wand to see where they were.
It was a large chamber; wandlight didn't reach far enough to find the other walls, so that they could see only the one they had just come through. There was a bench with some ancient alchemical implements on it, and more runes on the wall, disappearing into darkness in lunatic discord.
He walked forward, looking around for more walls, and after a few steps Draco grabbed his robe and pulled him up short. He looked back at him and then followed his gaze down; they were at the edge of a trench of liquid, difficult to identify in the darkness and silty with age. He couldn't see to the far side in his wandlight.
"I'm going to flash so we can see what we're dealing with," he warned Draco so he could protect his eyes, and then cast a spell that would fill the room with brilliant white light for about ten seconds.
He was prepared but still had to wince from his own light. He still got a decent, unpleasant impression of what it revealed: a rough chamber around fifty feet on a side, with a heavy iron-banded door directly across from them. The room's floor consisted of about a half-dozen platforms surrounded by thick channels of that liquid, crossed by narrow, railless bridges at irregular points. All of the platforms were littered with corpses.
Darkness returned, leaving them blind for a moment, and then he relit his wand so their eyes could readjust. Draco pulled his robe. "The bridge is over here."
"Wait. I want to look at that alchemy table first. I'm sure it's here for a reason."
"Are you sure that reason isn't bait for alchemists?" Draco went off without waiting for him, and Theo frowned at the small pool of light that showed him as he walked away. He was taking risks he shouldn't.
"Just stay back here, I won't be long." He went back to the table. It was stone, obviously ancient, but inset in the centre of it was a glass orb two-thirds filled with water, encircled with runes and symbols, which looked very impressive but the content of which was little more than a primer on the function of water in alchemy and ode to its virtues as the most mutable of all four primal building blocks. He tapped it idly, which accomplished nothing, and then looked over the implements and reagents arrayed with purpose but without clarity on the table.
"The ground was covered in bodies," Draco was musing from somewhere behind him. "Maybe that means the ground is a trap and we're supposed to navigate across the room in the sludge. Hm." His voice shifted downward as he presumably crouched or knelt. "It's just water, actually. …Ancient, filthy, noxious, disgusting water."
"Yeah, probably not safe anymore, if it ever was," Theo said absently, poring over the table.
"There's another symbol here, at the edge of the water. 'Fire'."
"Transmuting one pure element into another is one of the high goals of alchemy," he said distractedly. "There's no reason to label water as fire. Are you sure it's not 'water'?"
"I can tell which direction a triangle is facing, Theodore."
"Mm-hm. I think this is set up for a specific transmutation, but I'm not sure wh—"
"There's something moving," Draco interrupted. They both fell silent, and then Theo heard it too. Some sort of scraping, rustling, dragging sound, out in the room.
"Flash," Draco warned, and then the room lit up.
The only impression the flash of light left with Theo was that the bodies were on their feet.
"Inferi," Draco said tightly. "That's what the door warning meant about 'guarding it' if we failed." There was a splash as the first of the walking corpses dropped into the water, and then there were slowly more.
"All right, fire for inferi…" Theo turned his back on the alchemy table. "Two… three dozen?"
"More, I think." They heard another series of splashes, and they were coming closer. Draco stepped back up to the edge and very forcefully cast a transmutation spell on the water.
"That isn't going to work," Theo reminded him.
Draco relit his wand in time for him to see his cool glare. "I had to try. Turning this rancid water into something flammable is the natural solution. But no, of course your hero here won't stand for a solution as impure as transfiguration."
"No, but, yes, that's it, hold on—" He turned back to the table, running his eyes and hands over the runes and reagents, trying to fit it together. "This is the test, it's for transmuting the water, somehow."
"All right, good, do it."
He wished that it was that easy. If he had a proper lab, transmuting water to oil was a fairly simple procedure, but with these curated elements, ancient equipment, and that much water… How was he even supposed to change the water out there? "I have to figure this out, it's an eight hundred year old riddle. I need time."
The sloshing was growing unbearable. "There isn't much," Draco said. "Incendio!"
He looked back and realised the inferi weren't coming, they were there. Draco was throwing fire into the face of a gaunt corpse that was reaching out of the water for his legs, and there were more. And then darkness fell, because using his wand to protect them meant he couldn't use it for light.
"Draco!" He threw fire in the general direction of the water as he ran toward him, before the inferi could get to him, pull him down, hurt him…
"Depulso." Draco blasted inferi away from him and his hand caught Theo's chest in the dark. His left hand, the one that was still bleeding, which he realised when he grabbed it and found it cold. "Theo," he said firmly. "Go be a fucking alchemist before these things rip us apart." The sloshing underlined it, and a scratching sounds from the stone at their feet. Inferi clawing their way out of the water.
"I'm going to help you." He threw fire down at their feet to drive back the Inferi. The light of it showed Draco looking out toward the water, not at him.
"There's too much water to use fire against them until they're right on top of us, we're exposed on three sides, and the door back is already closed." He managed to work his hand out of his grip. "Whatever you can do to the water, that's what we need."
"I'm not going to let them—"
"If you insist on standing here trying to protect me, we're both going to die horribly!" Draco snapped.
Theo recoiled, more from the words than the tone. He hated this. He hated this. He would tear down the ceiling and the mountain above them and get Draco away from this if it were possible.
But all he could do was light his wand so Draco could see what he was doing and run back to the table. The sooner he could figure this out, the sooner Draco would be safe.
He had to focus. Tune out the fighting. Draco was throwing Inferi back and setting them on fire when he could, and he just had to trust him to do that and do this.
Okay, oil, how did he make oil out of this? There was no sulphur — had it been lost over the centuries? How did you have an alchemy lab without sulphur? He couldn't make oil without it. What was he missing? Maybe there was already sulphur in the water? He wished he'd gotten a sample.
No, there wasn't time — there would never have been time to extract anything out of the water under these circumstances, that can't have been the intended solution.
He looked up to see Draco slowly being forced back, covering all three sides and throwing back approaching Inferi that were getting near the table. He was so exposed — he couldn't use shields, he couldn't use half the spells he would in a duel, he couldn't Apparate, and most of the offensive charms he knew were ineffectual against these undead.
Forget the intended solution, who cared what the mediaeval maker knew, what could he do with what he knew?
He bowed his head over the reagents and ran through a list of flammable substances in his mind, desperately trying to match them together.
Aqua vitae. Alcohol. It hadn't been distilled for alchemy for over a hundred years after Aethelmaer's death, but he could make it. It was perfect.
Now how the fuck did he transmute thousands of gallons of filthy water all at once, quickly enough to be viable? He lifted the light of his wand and looked toward the room. Draco was only a few steps behind him now, his injured arm pressed tight to his chest, face grim, whirling around to ignite and deflect Inferi reaching for the table and them back to the ones reaching for his back. He had to save him…
He had to save him by doing his job. He bowed his head and shut out the sloshing and scraping and the sound of Draco's spells, focusing.
One of the lines of runes around the central water orb was talking about how all water was connected, a poetic phrasing of a core tenet of alchemy, so basic it was just background noise. Unless…
Synecdoche. The part was the whole.
The orb wasn't an orb, it was a flask. The entire table was the apparatus.
"I've got it! Hold on!" He launched into action, assembling the reagents, and had to snuff the light of his wand to light a fire inside the burner in the table, leaving them with the light of that small fire and Draco's spells. Introduce the mixture, bring it to heat, and he could transmute the water in the table…
"There! I've got it!" He spun around with his wand to find Draco. "Go, light the water!"
"Incendio!" Draco threw a fireball through the Inferi and into the trench.
What whumph as the huge amount of alcohol caught at once rocked the room, and a wash of hot air threw their clothes and hair around. The entire room was suddenly lit with a pale blue glow from the flames; they provided little light, but in the darkness it was brilliant.
Draco used Depulso to throw the remaining Inferi from their platform into the flames, and stepped back. Theo put his arms around him immediately; he held his wand out as well, so they could push back any of the corpses that managed to claw their way out of the trenches, but it was just cleanup now. It was eerily silent as the Inferi burned.
"It was aqua vitae," he said, rubbing Draco's side. "I actually think that was the intended solution, and that's mind-blowing; according to everything we know, it wasn't discovered for alchemy for another century, but he must have—"
"Theo," Draco said wearily, "I cannot stress enough how little of a shit I give right now."
"Sorry. Thank you." He ran his hand down the side of Draco's hair and ended up on his shoulder, and then noticed that his hand came away wet; he lit his wand to get clear white light to look, and realised it was blood.
"Shit, let me see." He turned Draco so he could look at him and realised for the first time that he'd been hurt; there were gouges in his clothing, particularly his left side, a cut in his wand arm, and what he'd accidentally run into was a distressingly clear set of four claw marks straight through his clothes and into the side of his neck and shoulder.
"They got you, shit, I'm sorry. We need more bandages."
"Go for it, these are ruined anyway."
He kissed Draco's head, then cut off his other sleeves and started tending his wounds. He wrapped the cut on his arm while Draco watched for escaped Inferi, and then did his best to apply pressure to the cuts on his neck. There was nothing good to do about those ones, though.
"You're cold. You're losing a lot of blood."
"I know."
"We need to keep going."
"I know." Draco took a deep breath and pulled away from him, wand held out cautiously, and led the way to the narrow footbridge to the next platform.
He moved air to keep the worst of the searing heat away from them as they passed over the burning moat; he could handle the bridges fairly well, but Theo was awkward and clumsy and had to go slow or risk falling in, so it took them ten minutes to get to the door. It was locked when they got there, with a series of letters on stones — Theo touched them in order to spell 'aqua vitae' and it proved it was exactly that rudimentary by opening for them.
They were in the burial chamber, finally. Theo lit the lamps scattered around the room to give them light; there was a plinth and stone coffin central at the far end of the room, and alcoves along the sides. Nothing looked immediately dangerous.
"Sit down, rest," he urged Draco, and went ahead to look around.
There were five corpses scattered around the room; four had been burnt beyond recognition, and one of them came to life as it noticed him, and he used Incendio to wear it down until it couldn't move anymore. One Inferius wasn't a big threat, as long as you had a wand and could walk away from it.
"Inferi aren't even alchemy," Draco commented coolly from behind him as it eventually went down. "What was his obsession with them?"
"The argument could be made. It is a permanent change, and is an involved, ritualistic process…"
"Then you might as well say Animagi are alchemical."
"Yes, you might. And… aren't they? Really? When the core distinction between transfiguration and transmutation is that transfiguration is ultimately reversible, and transmutation effects a permanent change in the nature of a thing? The point is, a lot of what was once under the umbrella of alchemy has been absorbed into other schools of magic — especially human alchemy, which is fairly taboo. It's only really palatable when it's called 'transfiguration' or 'healing'."
"That's a good argument for later." Draco went to sit on the steps beside the sarcophagus. He didn't even have the energy for a philosophical debate, and that wasn't a good sign. "I have a feeling this is going to cost more blood."
"Why?" He came to join him, looking at the coffin. It was plain but covered in runes, mostly, as far as he could make out, epithets about Aethelmaer's mastery of the mysteries of the arcane. He ran his hand over Draco's hair lightly.
"It's a trend. Also, there's another bowl behind here." Draco was leaning back and keeping pressure on his neck wounds. He didn't even open his eyes to say it.
Theo brushed his hair one more time, then went around the back of the coffin. There was another offering bowl on the plinth behind it, just as Draco said, but he wasn't so sure that was what it was for. "This one's already full of blood," he reported. There was also another lab-table and small library of ancient texts against the back wall, the very secrets he was here for, he was sure. He could stay here for days, taking that all in, if Draco weren't injured…
"Delightful."
He reluctantly left that section to find the way out. One of the alcoves was full of small burial shelves with a half dozen bodies, and names and descriptions written in runes. For most people, he would have expected them to be family, but most of them seemed to be Aethelmaer's student-assistants. The only exception was his wife, whose name was accompanied by an unfamiliar alchemical symbol.
The other alcove looked empty, but when he started searching it, on the basis that there was no reason to have an empty alcove, he found a dirt-filled socket in the centre of the wall. When he cleaned it out, it was exactly the right size to insert the tip of a wand into. He tried it immediately, and light curled out in channels along the wall, until it filled in a line of runes.
"I found a way out," he called to Draco. "The bad news is that there's another test. It says 'only he who carries my life's work back into the light will leave this tomb', and 'my power will open all doors'."
"So you can't just take the instructions and run," Draco said without moving. "You actually have to create it."
"I guess so." He studied the wall for another moment, seeing if there was anything else there, but there wasn't. He tried opening and unlocking it, just in case that would work, but of course it didn't. "Will you be all right? I have to look through these books to figure out what I have to do."
"I don't have much choice."
"I guess not." He came to the front of the grave and kissed the top of Draco's head. Draco didn't respond. "Just hold on a bit longer."
"I am."
He went back to the lab area and started trying to decipher Aethelmaer's magnum opus.
It was surprisingly easy to lose himself in the research, even despite the pressure.
He heard Draco talking in the background, because he didn't do well without something to distract himself from silence; he was saying that there were two or three expeditions who had made it this far before them but been unable to complete the final test and had died here, and everyone who died here became Inferi, explaining the bodies and the state of them. He agreed, but was only half paying attention, because he knew Draco just needed to talk, so when he noticed that Draco was reading off alchemical symbols, he had to do a double take and go look at him.
"Wait, where are these?"
Draco glanced up at him, then looked at the coffin. Theo scanned the runes on it with a frown, until Draco pointed to the side instead of the top and he crouched down to read them.
"They're being used as punctuation between names or deeds," he surmised, picking the symbols out from the runes. But the selection of symbols seemed almost random… or extremely intentional. He immediately circled the coffin, making notes to get them all down.
But they really didn't make much sense, even when they were all collected. "Gibberish," he concluded, but that didn't seem right. "Maybe… half complete. There may be more elsewhere."
"I'll see." Draco rolled to his feet with an effort and moved around to the back of the coffin. He left smears and drops of blood in his wake.
Theo was circling the coffin again, letting the runes flow over his mind, when it clicked. Half of the equation was in the symbols — the other half was the titles and deeds. 'The Great Fixator' was an instruction to fixate the materials at that point in the recipe. It was clever.
Ten minutes later, he joined Draco at the bowl of blood, rubbing Draco's back absently. "This is it, his grand equation. It was encoded on his coffin. I almost have it, just this one symbol I don't recognise."
"The same one I was telling you about," Draco noted, looking over his arm at his notes. He supposed he must have missed that while he was looking.
"Yes, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. It was beside his wife's coffin, too." He looked into the bowl of blood, where it was displayed prominently on the back of the rim. "And here."
"What good is an alchemical symbol no one understands?" Draco pointed out.
"None. So it must be explained here." He gestured to the books. "It's an important one, too. It's the key to the equation. It must be the representation of the foundation of his work. This equation is the recipe for transmuting that symbol — whatever it is — into, as far as I can tell, magic."
"That's absurd," Draco murmured. "Magic isn't a substance."
"I know. That's what makes this so exciting. If he found a way to actually convert magic into a form that can be stored, that's incredible."
"There's nothing to 'convert', it's still a nonsense premise. Magic is something creatures do."
"And yet." He tapped the equation. "Most of these books are in Latin, if you want to help. Just scan for the symbol." Draco nodded, and he fetched one of the books from the shelf for him to go through. Draco sat down there, leaning against the pedestal of the blood bowl and holding his neck as he skimmed.
Theo stood at the table, referencing the equation he had noted, putting as much as he could into action. There were several concurrent steps that would meet up later in the finished product, so while he was still trying to find the key, he could get it started. The equation was complex, and yet elegant, and the process flowed beautifully…
It took him a moment to understand when Draco spoke in a while. "That symbol is me."
He had to blink sense into the words, and looked back at Draco. He was leaning weakly against the pedestal, the side of his head against the stone, and his eyes were half closed.
"What?" He crouched in front of him and lifted Draco's hand from the book in his lap, rubbing his icy fingers to try to get blood flowing.
"'Sacrificium transmutatur'... Sacrifice. The key component in his great work is a sacrifice."
"The sacrifice is transmuted into magic," he murmured, looking distantly down at his notes.
"I'm so angry with you I wish I could feel my fingers so I could strangle you," Draco said quietly. "Not even curse you. I'd use my hands."
"That's why there had to be two… the alchemist and the sacrifice."
"You're supposed to be the good one. You're supposed to be better than this."
He kissed Draco's forehead. "No one's going to be killing you, for this or anything else." He'd find another way. If that was what it meant… Well, there had to be something else to sacrifice, something that wasn't Draco.
"'I'm so angry' doesn't mean I want you to kiss me just because I'm too weak to resist. I don't even want to look at you." He closed his eyes. "But you don't have to slaughter me like a lamb. This bowl is full of my blood already. It's the same blood from the first room. This is where it was going."
He stood up to look in the bowl, though he had no special insight. He could see that it showed no signs of congealing or drying, so there was clearly some magic involved. He crouched down and took Draco's hand again. "All right, I'm going to go through this process, and whatever 'magic' means, that blood will become it and get us out of here. I'm going to go as fast as I can, but we only have one shot, so I need to make sure it's right. I need you to stay with me for another hour."
Draco nodded silently.
"I'm sorry for all of this." He kissed his head again and stood up to move the blood sacrifice into position.
He was engrossed in the work when he heard Draco's quiet voice again. He was glad he was still conscious. "Theo… Was Aethelmaer hereticised because he sacrificed his wife to make one of these?"
"I honestly don't know," he admitted quietly. "I don't see why it should require the sacrifice of an actual life, especially since we're apparently doing it with a couple pints of blood. But seeing that symbol on her grave… I don't know," he repeated. Maybe he had gone down the old path of seeking power, thinking that if blood could accomplish something incredible, then an entire life would be something miraculous. Or maybe her death had been an accident or a tragedy, and he marked her like his magnum opus in a sign of single-minded love? He just didn't know.
The process was difficult, exacting, but beautiful in its way. Elegant. Honestly… It made him understand how Snape talked about potions.
And then… it was done. Some time later, he had no idea how long, he cast the final spell into the lab bench, and it thumped like a heart. He could feel it. That was incredible. When he opened the crucible, there was a black mist of vapours that drifted away, and revealed the fruits of his labour. What had started as about two pints of Draco's blood and a dozen other reagents had been transformed into a single brilliant red crystal the size of the last joint of one of his fingers, beautifully faceted and symmetrical, completely opaque and yet shimmering in the light. When he pulled it out, it was almost burning hot to the touch, and made his hand tingle. Touching it reminded him of touching a wand for the first time.
"Draco, it's finished." He held the pure, crystallised magic delicately, but he didn't get the feeling it was delicate at all. It was heavy, like lead or gold, maybe even more, and it felt like it could withstand anything. "Do you want to see?"
"...mm…" His voice was faint.
It took that to remind him of the shape Draco was in. He swore at himself for his distraction and immediately turned back to Draco's side.
He looked terrible. It was impossible for Draco to actually get paler than he normally was, but the blood on him highlighted it, and it looked terrifying. He didn't seem to have moved from where he had been reading, but the book was on the floor now, and he had his eyes closed and was breathing very shallowly.
"Draco." He crouched beside him and brushed his hair back. His skin was cool. "Rennervate," he cast, to rouse him, and as he did the crystal in his other hand felt like it shocked him. Draco moaned and blinked his eyes open. He wouldn't be able to maintain consciousness for long. "We did it, you'll be okay now. We can leave."
"All right…" Draco mumbled, and started trying to stand. He couldn't and seemed vaguely confused by that. He also didn't seem to be able to use his left hand at all; his arm had been tourniqueted too long, and hopefully they would be able to repair that damage.
"It's all right." Theo kissed his head, picked up the book and put it in his bag with the rest, and then stood up and lifted Draco to his feet, holding him against his side. Draco helped but needed the support. He put his forehead in the crook of Theo's neck, and he could still barely feel his breath.
"Just a couple more minutes," he promised, rubbing Draco's back.
"You did it?" Draco mumbled vaguely. "Good job…"
"You're going to be very embarrassed when you're not woozy — you've forgotten to couch your compliments in teasing and emotionally-distant 'quite'-ness." He supported him to the wall and levelled his wand at it. "Aberto!"
The wall cracked right up the middle, and the runes faded away to blank stone as the now-door swung apart. The Lumos Theo cast lit up the hall like daylight, and he helped Draco out of the tomb, to the surface where they could Apparate to the hospital.
((Part 2))
((Notes: This is labelled "caretaker failure" because Theo is mansplaining, dismissive, actively tunes him out, and gets lost in his work to Draco's detriment... Like, he means well, but still.))
((Promptspiration:
@whumptober-archive 2023: day 27:
Scars / "Let me see." ))
Genre: angst
Romance level: none
Angst level: 3/5
Draco's headspace: shame -> retrospective
((words: ~1100))
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It was inevitable that eventually Draco would poorly time his morning routine, especially when he had a hard night of dreams and had to drag himself out of bed. This morning he was still dressing when his mother checked that he was up with her normal habit of rapping on the door and then pushing it open without a pause.
He immediately turned away, buttoning his shirt, and she started to close the door, but then stopped. "Is that a scar?"
He resolutely continued facing away from her, and buttoned his shirt up to his throat. "It doesn't matter."
"Then it is." She let herself into the room. "Show me."
He neither answered nor obeyed, but took his robe from the wardrobe and shrugged it on.
She put her hand on his shoulder before he could button it. "Let me see."
"It's years old, Mother. It doesn't matter."
"You understand that that's worse." She gently but undeniably turned him to face her and unbuttoned the top of his shirt.
He took over so that at least he was the one doing it, if it was going to be done. Two buttons and he could pull the shirt aside to show her the edge of the scar on his chest.
"What is that?" She pulled his shirt down with two fingers, trying to find the edge of it. "You weren't injured like this in the battle…?"
"No." Reluctantly, he completely unbuttoned his shirt and held it open so she could see the whole scar, and looked away. He wished she wouldn't look — not just at the scar, but at him. He needed the shield of tailoring and fine materials to hide himself, because without them, the truth was just pale, narrow, sunken weakness.
"That is enormous," she said with a frown, touching the top corner absently. It extended from the top of his left shoulder, all the way diagonally across his chest, until it disappeared under his ribs on the right side, in one harsh, unbroken line. It wasn't dark or raised or particularly thick, but it was very present.
A proper wizard shouldn't have scars. It was some sort of personal failing, to have gotten in the way of something that brutish. Only Aurors and beast handlers and curse-breakers acquired scars in the course of their rough work. Not their sort. Certain not from something so… stupid.
Honestly, the fact that it wasn't even from anything important was worse. A shameful mark with a pathetic story written across his disgusting body.
He couldn't take being looked at any longer and turned away to button his shirt again.
"That looks like it could have killed you."
"Almost," he said, looking distantly at the wood of the wardrobe. "It was worse than it looks now. It cut up my face, all across my chest… Thirty more seconds of bleeding out and he'd have been a murderer. But Snape handled it. Only the worst one scarred."
"Who did that to you?"
"Harry Potter," he said.
He sensed more than heard an angry hiss of her breath. "Why didn't I know about this?"
"It was sixth year… There were more important things going on."
"There are not more important things than someone trying to kill you! Even that."
"In all honesty…" He let out a small, reluctant sigh. "I don't think it was intentional. He was still stood there gawping after Snape got there and saved me. Between him and Crabbe, it seems like it's only ever idiots who don't know how their spells work that run the risk of killing me…" Well, them, and the Dark Lord…
"I still should have been informed."
This time he didn't speak until he had finished buttoning his shirt, maybe half a minute. "What good would it have done?" he finally said quietly. "They wouldn't have punished him."
She crossed her arms firmly. "I would have seen to it that they did."
"How? Even if he weren't their little golden boy, how could he get any consequences without me explaining how it all started because he burst in on me crying because I couldn't find a way to kill Dumbledore? Anyway… I tried to Crucio him in the same duel," he admitted. "I'd have been the one punished. Even though I never managed to touch him," he added with some bitterness. That was just his lot in life, it seemed — try to do something wrong, fail miserably, and still be punished for it.
She lightly touched the hair at the back of his head. "You still should have told me. I don't like the idea that you can nearly die and I don't even know. Even if I can't help, I need to know."
"I know," he admitted quietly. "But you had enough to worry about."
"It isn't your job to protect me, from worry or anything else."
"I want to," he murmured. And he had tried to protect her. Even though he'd never done her a single iota of good, he had tried…
He was silent for a moment, buttoning his robe mechanically, and she continued playing with his hair absently for that time. "Snape was the only one who knew," he mused distantly. "And it turns out that Potter was his pet, too. If you hadn't trapped him with that Vow… maybe he would have let me die there."
Her hand slid down to rub his shoulder. "I genuinely don't think so."
The words were hollow, though. The only reason he would have not to was if he cared, and Draco didn't have any reason anymore to think he ever truly had. He had probably always been lying, to stay close to his father, out of usefulness and just in case. He was bitterly stupid to have ever trusted him. Now he had to look back at his whole life and try to pick out which parts were real and which were Snape using him. Probably more realistic to assume all of it.
"It had to have crossed his mind. It would have saved him a lot of trouble. It would have saved Dumbledore… It would have saved him."
"'Saved him'? Severus' death isn't your fault."
Not directly. But if he hadn't been the one to kill Dumbledore…
Maybe an awful death was just the lot of a traitor… or a hero…
"I know," he told her, because his actual thoughts were too complicated to put into words, and she didn't need to be subjected to that anyway. He had already said too much.
He straightened his sleeves and ran his hand through his hair once to fix it, then turned back to her, calm, all his scars and the truth of weakness hidden under the polished outer shell. "I'm sorry I held you up."
((Content warning: sleep deprivation / night terrors))
((Promptspiration:
@whumptober-archive 2023: day 26:
Sometimes I get so tired; I don't even know myself. ))
Genre: hurt/comfort
Romance level: high
Angst level: 3/5
Draco's headspace: tired / fatalistic
((words: ~1300))
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Neither of them mentioned sleeping in the same bed, that first night after Draco showed up at Theo's floo; he supposed they were both trying to act like it 'just sort of happened'. Not that they did anything. Draco just couldn't stand the idea of being alone. Maybe it was the same for Theo, after a year.
It wasn't as weird as it probably should have been. Draco couldn't remember ever sharing a bed with anyone — literally, ever, even though he knew that at some point in his life he must have gone crying to his parents with bad dreams or something, the last time must have been when he was too young to remember — but they had slept in the same room for a third of their lives, and it didn't feel unnatural to have him there. Draco'd fallen asleep after his standard hour-dose of Dreamless Sleep potion tucked snugly between Theo and the wall, not quite actually touching him.
He woke sitting up, throat raw, heart hammering, a light flashing in the corner of his vision, someone trying to take hold of him, knowing nothing except that he was in terrible danger. He was trapped. He cringed into the corner holding his hair, waiting to be hurt.
"Draco!" He flinched as someone grabbed him. It wasn't his father's voice, though, or any of the Death Eaters.
"Draco! Come on…" The hands pulled on his to make him uncover his head. "Lie down, you need to relax, breathe… Come on, Draco…"
Theo's voice. Theo's hands.
He slowly unclenched his hands, and Theo pulled them down, squeezing them both tightly. "You're okay, deep breaths…" The flashing light was his heart monitor, and that explained why he was saying that.
"Let me go," he said quietly.
Theo hesitated, then let go of his hands and slid backward off the bed. That was what he needed. Leaving the bed felt less trapped, and he paced the length of the room in silence while Theo watched.
He had a feeling that pacing probably wasn't meant to be able to help his heart — it was exertion, after all — but it did help him when this happened, because it was slow, rhythmic, something he could time his breathing to and simultaneously something else to think about than his heart. This wasn't a real heart event, it was just a bit of fear that made it fast, and he could walk it down.
After a few minutes, the calm breathing worked, and the light at his wrist was back to normal. He held it up to show Theo, for confirmation, a habit after having been monitored by his mother for so long, then shut it off with a touch.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Theo shifted to sit on the side of the bed, still watching apprehensively. The room was lit only by one dim lamp, but it was still easy to see the size of his eyes and the solemnity of his expression.
Draco nodded and leaned against the bannister around the top of the stairs. "I'm sorry. I forgot to Silence myself."
"Silencing yourself so you don't wake anybody up is so far away from the right response to nightmares." He got up as well but didn't force a touch on him, hanging back squeezing his hands together instead. "It hasn't gotten any better?"
Draco shrugged slightly and looked away, toward the window at the front of the house, a round, dusty portal letting in a grimy haze of city light. "Not really. Tonight it was probably because I didn't know where I was, though." It sounded right, anyway. "I didn't think about it."
"You're not seriously apologising for having a bad dream, are you?" He didn't answer, and Theo came closer. "That was a dream, right?"
"I suppose so. I don't really remember it."
"So I didn't do something that scared you…?" His voice had gotten quiet.
Draco glanced back at him and shook his head. "I'm just tired," he said quietly. He sighed and leaned his head against the edge of the window frame, letting his eyes close. "I'm so tired of being tired…"
"Physically, or…?"
"In every way. But yes. I haven't had a full night of sleep that didn't come from a bottle since I was only just sixteen. Dreamless Sleep potions are just… a reprieve, they don't really give you rest. Physically, maybe, but not your mind."
Theo had come up and was right behind his shoulder. "Can I…?" He nodded, and Theo's arms came around him, holding him tightly, wrapping him up in his warmth and not wholly pleasant alchemist's scent. Theo's forehead rested against the top of his hair. "I'm so sorry. I wish to hell I could do something besides say that."
Draco didn't answer, just opened his eyes and stared pensively out the window at the impressionist smears of the cityscape outside.
"Why don't you tell me what you've tried for sleeping?" Theo lifted his head. "I'll see if there's any holes alchemy could fill in."
As though the Healers weren't already alchemists. But why not. "Every sleeping charm or hex I've ever found does nothing for the dreams, just makes me fall asleep instantly then it proceeds as normal. I tried drinking… That made the dreams worse and made me sick, I guess that's not a surprise. Dreamless Sleep does what it's supposed to do, but like I said, it's not actual rest. I've tried every sleeping potion up to Draught of the Living Death; none of them help."
"Up to? But not including? Why haven't you tried that one?"
Draco turned his ring around his finger with his thumb. "I'm afraid to," he admitted quietly. "I think I'll dream but I won't be able to wake up."
Theo rubbed his arm in long, slow motions. "That's probably a really valid concern, actually."
"The fact that it hasn't gotten any better suggests it is part of Voldemort's curse after all," Draco said dully, staring out the window. "Which means it never can get better."
"Are they sure?"
"No. There's no proof either way. But the alternative is that I'm just so fucked up that this is all me, and it still hasn't gotten any better in all these years. Is that any less terrible?"
"I'm sorry," Theo said quietly, and rubbed his arm some more.
Draco sighed and closed his eyes again. "I just wish I could sleep," he murmured vaguely.
Theo rested his forehead against his head again for a little bit. "Will you let me try to help?"
"How?"
"I'll just be with you." He lifted his head and stepped back a little, sliding his hands down his arms to encourage him to uncross them; he did, after a second, and Theo ended up holding his hand and pulling him back toward the bed.
He resisted moving, but held his hand. "I've just proved that doesn't work. I'll just destroy your sleep for no reason."
"That's okay. If it happens, I don't mind." He urged again, and this time Draco went with him. He lay back down and pushed himself to the back, next to the wall. "I'll stay on this side so you can get up if you need to, I noticed that looked like a problem."
"Thanks." He sat on the edge of the bed.
Theo rubbed his hand with his thumb, watching him, After a moment, he squeezed it gently. "Lie down. It'll be all right."
Draco glanced over at him, then did as he was urged without replying. He wasn't expecting it when Theo put his arm over him and slid up close beside him. Awkward…
…Comfortable…
He ended up with his back to Theo's chest, fingers laced together in front of him under the blanket, all wrapped up in him. He had no idea if he would sleep, but he hoped he wouldn't ruin this, because it was… nice.
