((Promptspiration:
@whumptober-archive 2023: day 25:
Storm ))
Genre: whump
Romance level: none
Angst level: 4/5
Draco's headspace: scared
((words: ~500))
------------------------------------
Draco's shoulders flinched as the thunder rolled overhead.
The rope that tied him to the low ceiling beam of the cellar wasn't even long enough to let him reach the corner. He had to huddle against the cold earth of the back wall, at the very edge of the rope's length, shivering into his knees. He could sit, but not lie down, unless he was directly under the centre of the length where it was tied. Even sitting against the wall, the rope didn't quite reach; it was taut holding his arms nearly outstretched, and he had to sit with his elbows propped on his knees to hold them up.
It was raining outside, for the first time since he had been taken here. It had been for a while, and he had thought it would let up, but it hadn't; he could hear it in ways he wasn't accustomed to, raw and close, beating down on the stones of the cottage above his head. The thunder felt like it was right at the top of the stairs. The lightning even flashed brief white lines in the cracks of the door at the top of the steps, relieving the impenetrable darkness in a way that was over before he could even appreciate it and left him only with afterimages of cracks across his vision.
He'd grown up in the country, but it wasn't… like this. At home there was a whole manor between him and the elements. At school they were buried so far under the castle and lake he never even knew when there was a storm. Theo's house was in the middle of the city and felt of people.
The cellar doors rattled fiercely in a gust of wind, like they were fighting against the charms or chains or whatever it was that locked them shut, and he turned his face away, into his shoulder. He could hear dripping, closer, underneath the howl of the storm; rainwater that was blown under the door and ran from the top stair.
He wasn't afraid of storms. That was stupid, it was just a storm, he wasn't even flying, there was nothing to be afraid of…
He wasn't afraid of the dark. That was stupid, it was just darkness, it was good for him… good for hiding… There was nothing to be afraid of…
But he still didn't want to raise his head and look at it.
Thunder cracked overhead and he flinched again, burying his face in his knees and trying to get his upper arms over his ears.
Not afraid, he repeated to himself. He was just cold, and hurting, and tired… and alone…
There was no one around him for miles. Maybe dozens of miles. He was aware of that all the time, but he felt it so acutely right now. If the roof caved in, no one would hear it… no one would know…
He didn't want that fucker Rowle to ever come back again… but if he were here… at least it would be someone…
The thunder came again, and he jerked, and it hurt his shoulders, and he couldn't bear it. "Just fucking stop!" he screamed at the sky.
And the thunder cracked again to prove he had no power over it, or anything else.
While he waited, Draco started poking around the small pile of gifts that had been sent to the family, and were stacked in the hall on a table near the tree. Historically, it had always been his role to open them. He vaguely recalled declining it last year, but he was in a better place, mentally, this year, and it was a simple, familiar pleasure he indulged in.
None of the gifts were anything special, really, just little social lubricants. A silver picture frame, a bottle of French wine, an invitation to a Quidditch exhibition…
There was a package of unwieldy enough weight he used his wand to levitate it instead of moving it, and it thumped intriguingly when it was jostled, making him wonder what was rolling around inside and who had been so poor at packing. It had no label, which only made the mystery more intriguing.
He sliced the gold paper and began to lift the lid from the box, and then it moved itself, jerking out of his hands. Black smoke poured out of the box and down onto the floor, and then coalesced into a figure, a horrible white figure with red eyes draped in darkness, looming over him to fill the space.
Draco scrambled backward with a scream he didn't recognise, tripped on nothing and fell, pushing himself away from Voldemort's reaching hand and cold laugh. His mind was just screaming emptily.
With the scream nearly right outside his study, Lucius was the first to respond. At the edge of the staircase he was able to see Draco across the room, cowering before Voldemort; he barely had time to comprehend the enormity of that and begin to reach for his wand when Voldemort whirled toward him, and then his face twisted. The Dark Lord morphed into a ghastly Dark Mark of shifting green smoke and sickly light that loomed above them, filling the high ceiling. He recoiled from the sight automatically.
Narcissa's steps quickened above him as they reached the stairs, with Nott's heavy ones following. "Draco!" She was only in time to see the Dark Mark hanging over Draco on the floor, and that must have been heart-wrenching.
The Dark Mark fell to the floor and solidified into a blond corpse covered in blood; from a distance it wasn't clear if it was him or Draco, and maybe it didn't know itself or was a mix of both. She stopped and hissed in a breath.
He pointed his wand at the apparition. "Riddikulus." With the sound of a whip-crack, the corpse was dressed in a frilly pink nightgown, which at least made it less realistic.
The boggart's attention turned toward him and it resumed the form of the Dark Mark again, but this time he was prepared for it. "Riddikulus," he cast again. The skull bit down and severed the snake's head, and started choking as the decapitated snake strangled it — not funny, necessarily, but at least satisfying.
Nott barked out a laugh and came down the stairs. "Riddikulus." The altered Dark Mark turned pink and disappeared; the boggart focused on him and turned into Draco, not a corpse but clutching his chest and gasping for breath. When he cast the charm this time, dying Draco coughed out a Snitch and was fine, then transformed again.
There were too many of them for it now; it couldn't focus and flickered into unstable shapes, like Voldemort with a Dark Mark for a head (mildly unsettling), a giant looming Voldemort head (horrifying), a Dark Mark with Draco's face in place of a skull (horrifying), and for one brief glorious moment, Voldemort's bloody corpse. Nott was the only one who could actually laugh at it, and he was the one who drove it back into the box with Lucius and to a lesser extent Narcissa casting the charm to keep it off balance; Draco had regained his feet, but he never cast the spell.
"That sucked," Nott said as he sealed up the box with probably more locking charms than strictly necessary. A paper fluttered away from the bottom of it, from underneath the wrapping paper, and he picked it up curiously, then glanced up at the rest of them.
"What?" Lucius came to collect it, while Draco was insisting shortly to his mother that he was fine, 'just surprised', never mind that his hands were visibly shaking.
Nott handed the paper over, but also relayed what it said. "'Death Eaters, never forgiven'."
The room went quiet. Lucius narrowed his eyes and swiftly scanned the note, but that was all there was. "Take that outside," he instructed, flicking his wand toward the doors, and turned back toward his study. "I'll have the Ministry come for it."
"Can you find out who's behind this?" Nott asked at large. He found Draco's wand rolled up against the bottom stair, and retrieved it in the ensuing silence.
Draco was the only one who answered, after he finished the Calming Draught his mother had the house elf bring him and accepted his wand back. "It doesn't matter."
"It does matter. They can't just get away with doing something like this. What else are you supposed to do? Just take it?"
"You don't validate them with a reaction," Draco said flatly. "You don't sink to their level."
Not publicly, anyway. Lucius was going to find the responsible party.
((Promptspiration:
@whumptober 2023: day 21:
"Don't move." ))
Genre: angst
Romance level: none
Angst level: 3/5
Draco's headspace: fear / numb
((words: ~1000))
------------------------------------
"Wormtail's coming," Draco reported from the drawing room window. "He has somebody."
"It's taken him long enough." Bellatrix stretched languidly and then tipped herself out of the chair. His father was the only other one present; now that he had no wand, he wasn't given any tasks except to wait on their lord's call. "Nagini's in my room, go and fetch her."
He was immediately uneasy at that idea. He had never had any fear of snakes — he was a born and bred Slytherin, after all — but he had never before seen a snake eat a person… let alone a person he knew…
No. Push that down and don't think about it.
He nodded without a word and headed out into the hall, just as Wormtail was bringing his… prisoner, maybe?... inside. It was a man probably in his thirties, in simple clothes that might be Muggle, and now that he saw him move it was clear he was a prisoner; Wormtail wasn't very good at the Imperius, so he had to use his wand to puppet the man along, and he was moving woodenly, his mind clearly fighting it.
"Oh, careful!" he heard Bellatrix yell behind him. "She's hungry!" He could hear a dark grin.
He didn't stop to acknowledge that or Wormtail, but went upstairs to the block of rooms the Lestranges had taken over.
When he opened the door, the room seemed pitch black, and he waited for his eyes to adjust on the threshold, letting the light of the corridor try to penetrate the shadows. Shadows where the snake could be draped or coiled, anywhere, unseen. He was hesitant to go in before he knew where she was, though he didn't want to admit it.
That brought up another problem… How did one 'fetch' a snake like this? Something like twenty feet long and bigger around than his leg? Even if he were willing to physically try to move her, he sincerely doubted that would have any effect. The thought of the Dark Lord's reaction if someone tried to use magic on her was something else he couldn't even bring himself to think about, so that went down too, down where Professor Burbage was, far away under his thoughts.
She was eerily intelligent, or at least, it seemed so, sometimes. Maybe she would come when called, even without the Parseltongue?
He gathered himself to try it. "Nagini…" His voice was less certain than he meant it to be, softer, and he cleared his throat, debating trying again.
He sensed movement more than heard or saw anything, and tensed up, heart erratically skipping beats and making him hold his chest. He thought a shadow was twisting in the darkness. When the sliver of light into the room was suddenly interrupted by the blunt nose of the snake, and great red eyes that turned toward him, the muscles of his back flinched but he managed not to move.
Her tongue flickered out, tasted the air, and she slithered with glacial inevitability into the light. He stepped back to clear the doorway for her, but she wasn't interested; she aimed for him instead, and as more feet of snake kept coming, she raised her head off the floor, and slowly lifted higher, until her face was level with his, and then even a bit higher, swaying slightly in a hypnotic rhythm.
He didn't dare move. He couldn't possibly get away, couldn't even possibly draw his wand, faster than she could strike. His heart was racing like a bat in his chest flailing and squeaking in a panic to get away; he was convinced she could hear it, or smell it, or sense it however snakes did. How hungry was she? He was about to learn what it was like to be swallowed by the darkness between her fangs and die surrounded by snake…
Nagini lowered her head and slid around him, rock-hard muscle pressing against his legs. The ghostly flicker of her tongue against the back of his neck made him flinch like he'd been stabbed.
Then her presence was gone. She slithered into the corridor with the quiet rasp of scales on carpet, winding toward the staircase.
He gripped the doorway tightly, beginning to breathe again and only then realising he had stopped. His hands were shaking. He took deep breaths, wrestling with his heartbeat to try to calm it down and make his hands behave, forcing away those thoughts, and after a few minutes he was able to stand up straight and felt like he was basically under control.
When he got back to the drawing room, Wormtail's prisoner was free and was holding onto a chair, trying to keep that between himself and the snake, which had taken up the centre of the rug. "You're all bonkers!" he was yelling wildly, looking around himself in complete disorientation. His eyes found Draco at the doorway. "These people are insane, help me!"
"just kill him already," Draco's father said without moving from the fireplace, apparently to Bellatrix. "You're the only one who finds this noise amusing."
Bellatrix playfully waved her wand in the direction of the prisoner. "Draco's here, he can do it. Come on, this will be easier than Dumbledore. Baby steps, but we'll make a man out of you yet."
His eyes flicked from the prisoner to his unresponsive father and back to Bellatrix. "Don't you need to interrogate him first?"
"Interrogate for what? This is just snake food."
Then this wasn't even for information, or punishment… They just grabbed a random Muggle off the street to feed him to the snake…
"Fuck's sake, boy, it's only a Muggle." Bellatrix's voice was exasperated. "Are you really that precious? Do you pick up rats and release them outside instead of killing them?"
They were spared any more debate — Nagini grew tired of waiting and took matters into her own hands, striking out suddenly. She knocked the chair aside and sank her fangs into the man's throat, pulled back and struck again. Blood sprayed out over the floor and he collapsed into a boneless pile, gurgling as his blood flowed out of him onto the floor.
Draco controlled the flinch of his shoulders this time, and swallowed thickly but didn't even look away, letting the vision of the snake opening her jaws to engulf the man's head and slowly work her way down his body wash over him without affecting him, not letting himself feel it.
