#hp fic

[yeuxverts00]

Chapter 36 — Bloodtoll — [REDACTED]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[hellootitty]

BURNING BLUE

in which; trapped under the icy weight of the Dark Mark and his deadly sixth-year mission, Draco Malfoy ruthlessly pushes you away to protect you from his sinking world.

(inspired by "burning blue" by mariah the scientist)

draco malfoy x reader

author notes: angstyyy. draco's misunderstood af, i feel for him so bad. mean draco, but we all know why. we <3 u draco

2037 words

The Slytherin common room didn’t just feel cold tonight; it felt entirely devoid of air.

The green-tinted light filtering through the depths of the Black Lake cast sickening, skeletal shadows across the stone walls, making the grand room feel less like a sanctuary and more like a mausoleum.

Draco was slumped in the heavy leather armchair by the glass, a half-empty tumbler of firewhisky resting against his knee.

He looked painfully thin.

The sharp lines of his jawline seemed jagged under the dim lighting, and his silver-blonde hair, usually pristine, was a chaotic mess where his frantic fingers had repeatedly torn through it.

You stood by the threshold, the heavy thud of the portrait door still echoing in your ears.

He hadn’t even blinked.

You were entirely invisible to him, a recurring ghost in a script he had already checked out of.

Lately, loving Draco Malfoy didn't feel like a choice; it felt like a terminal diagnosis.

You had spent months watching him deteriorate, tracking the deepening purple bruises under his eyes, the frantic tremors in his hands, and the way he completely detached himself from reality.

You had thrown your entire soul into the gap between who he used to be and the monster he was being forced to become.

But you were running out of breath.

"Draco," you said, your voice barely scraping past the lump in your throat.

His eyes didn't leave the dark water outside.

A giant squid tentacle drifted lazily past the glass, a massive, unbothered shadow.

"Go to bed," he muttered, his voice raspy, stripped raw from days of silence and god-knows-what else.

"No." You took a step forward, your boots clicking sharply against the stone.

The sound was too loud, too alive for this dead space.

"I’m not doing this tonight. I’m not playing the game where we pretend I don’t exist until you need a place to hide."

A bitter, humorless laugh escaped his lips, sounding more like a choke.

"Then don't play. Nobody is holding a wand to your throat, forcing you to sit here and watch me rot."

"That’s exactly what you’re doing!" The sudden volume of your own voice startled you, ringing off the high ceilings.

Tears, hot and furious, pricked at the corners of your eyes.

"You don’t say a word, Draco, but you look at me with those dead eyes and you demand that I stay. You drain every single ounce of warmth I have just so you can feel human for five minutes, and then you push me back into the dark."

Finally, he looked at you.

And god, you almost wished he hadn't.

His gray eyes were bloodshot, completely vacant, stripped of the arrogant spark that used to infuriate and captivate you.

There was nothing left in them but a hollow, agonizing panic.

He set the glass down on the side table with a violent thud, some of the amber liquid splashing over his pale knuckles.

"You think I want you here?" he hissed, standing up so abruptly his chair screeched against the floor.

He stepped into your space, a towering, suffocating presence of cold air, expensive cologne, and stale alcohol.

"You think it makes me feel good to look at you and know that I am actively ruining the only good thing left in my miserable life?"

"Then let me in!" you cried, reaching out to grab the lapels of his black sweater.

You gripped the fabric tightly, as if you could physically anchor him to the earth.

"Talk to me! Let me help you carry whatever this is. I don't care about your name; I don't care about your family. I just care about you."

Draco froze.

For an agonizingly long second, his gaze dropped to your hands on his chest.

His chest heaved with a ragged breath.

Then, with a slow, agonizing deliberateness, he reached up and took your wrists.

His grip wasn't violent, but it was unyielding as he pried your hands off him.

He pulled up the left sleeve of his shirt.

The dark ink of the Dark Mark seemed to writhe against his pale skin, a grotesque, pitch-black stain that contrasted sharply with the moonlight.

It looked angry, inflamed, and completely permanent.

"Help me carry this?" Draco whispered, his voice trembling as he forced you to look at it. "How? Are you going to take half the curse? Are you going to look the Dark Lord in the eye and tell him you'll take my place in the manor? You're playing a childish game of house, and I am fighting for my fucking life."

The raw cruelty of his words slammed into your chest, knocking the wind right out of you.

You stepped back, a tear finally breaking free and racing down your cheek.

The pain was physical, an ache right beneath your ribs that made it hard to stand.

You had offered him your entire heart on a silver platter, and he was using it for target practice.

"I know what you're doing," you said, your voice dropping to a broken, fragile whisper. "You're trying to make me hate you. Because it's easier to push me away than to admit you're terrified."

Draco’s jaw clenched so hard you heard the bone click.

A flicker of absolute anguish crossed his face before he locked it down, burying it beneath a mask of pure, aristocratic ice.

"Believe whatever helps you sleep at night," he said quietly, turning his back to you.

He gripped the edge of the stone mantlepiece, his knuckles turning white.

"But the truth is, I’m tired of looking at you. I’m tired of your pity. I'm tired of you acting like my savior when I don't want to be saved. You're suffocating me."

The room went entirely still.

The silence that followed was suffocating, heavy with the absolute finality of what had just been broken.

You looked at his broad, tense shoulders, realizing with a sickening certainty that the boy you loved was dead.

This version of Draco was a stranger.

A beautifully tragic shell wrapped in a freezing, toxic blue flame.

"You really are a coward, Draco," you whispered, the words empty of anger, filled only with a profound, crushing grief.

He didn't move.

He didn't defend himself.

You turned around and walked toward the common room exit, each step feeling like you were pulling your feet out of wet cement.

As you pushed open the heavy portrait door, the warmth of the corridor outside hit your skin, a jarring contrast to the icy tomb you were leaving behind.

Behind you, in the silence of the green room, the only sound was the faint, trembling sigh of a boy holding a glass of firewhisky, letting himself sink all the way to the bottom.

The days that followed were a blur of gray skies and heavy silences.

You tried to keep your distance, to let the fire he had so ruthlessly put out settle into cold ash, but the truth was that your heart couldn't just stop beating for him.

Every glance across the Great Hall, every time he brushed past you in the crowded corridors without a single word, felt like a fresh cut.

He looked worse each day.

More fragile, more translucent, as if the castle itself were slowly digesting him.

It was a rainy Tuesday night when the silence cracked.

You were sitting in a secluded corner of the library, staring blankly at an essay for Transfiguration that you hadn't progressed on in hours.

The rhythmic patter of the rain against the stained-glass windows was the only sound keeping you anchored.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over your desk.

You looked up, expecting a librarian or a prefect telling you it was past curfew.

Instead, it was Draco.

He wasn't wearing his school robes, just the same fitted black knit sweater, his hands shoved deep into his trousers' pockets.

He didn't look angry anymore.

He just looked entirely, thoroughly defeated.

Before you could say a word or even pack up your books to leave as he so often did with you, he pulled out the chair directly across from you and sat down.

For a long time, neither of you spoke.

The space between you felt stretched, thin, and fragile like spun glass.

"I can't sleep," he said finally.

His voice was a bare whisper, entirely stripped of the harsh, defensive armor he had worn in the common room.

He kept his eyes locked on the wooden grain of the table, his fingers nervously tracing a knot in the dark oak.

"Every time I close my eyes, I see everything catching fire. And when I wake up, the room is freezing."

Your chest tightened, a wave of fierce, stubborn tenderness washing over you despite how deeply he had wounded you.

"Why are you telling me this? You made your point very clear the other night. You want me gone."

"I lied," he whispered.

The confession was so soft, so raw, that it almost got lost in the sound of the rain.

Finally, he lifted his head, and the sheer vulnerability in his silver eyes made your breath hitch.

There was no ice left.

No Malfoy pride.

Just a terrified sixteen-year-old boy staring at the only person who had ever truly seen him.

"I lied because if I let you stay, I’ll ruin you," he continued, his jaw trembling slightly.

He reached across the table, his hand hovering over yours, hesitant, terrified of being rejected.

When you didn't pull away, his cold fingers slowly slid over your knuckles, gripping your hand with a desperate, crushing intensity.

"You're burning so bright, and everything around me is just... burning blue. It's an ugly, cold kind of fire, love. It consumes everything and leaves nothing but frost."

Tears sprang to your eyes, warm and heavy. "I told you, I didn't care about the frost. I would have stood in the cold with you."

"And that's exactly why I had to push you out," he said, his thumb softly tracing the back of your hand, a heartbreakingly familiar gesture from a lifetime ago. "Because you would have stayed until you froze to death, just to keep my hands warm. You would have let me destroy you if it meant I felt a little less alone."

He let out a ragged, trembling breath, his gaze dropping to your joined hands.

"I looked at you tonight from across the room, and I realized... I'm a sinking ship, and I’m already underwater. But you... you still have air in your lungs. You still have a life ahead of you that isn't stained by dark magic and impossible choices. If I pull you down into the deep water with me, I’ll never forgive myself. I’m doing this because I love you enough to let you hate me."

The heartbreak settled deep into your bones, no longer a sharp pain but a profound, aching sorrow.

You realized then that this was his version of mercy.

In his broken, twisted world, isolating you was the only shield he had left to offer.

He couldn't stop the storm from coming, but he could make sure you weren't standing by his side when the lightning struck.

"I could never hate you, Draco," you whispered, reaching out with your free hand to gently cup his cheek.

His skin was shockingly cold against your palm, and he leaned into your touch for just a fraction of a second, his eyes fluttering closed as if capturing the memory of your warmth to carry into the dark.

"Good," he murmured, opening his eyes, a devastating, beautiful sadness shining in them. "Then remember me like this. Not like the ghost I have to be tomorrow."

He slowly pulled his hand away from yours, the loss of his touch leaving a bitter chill on your skin.

He stood up, towering over you one last time, the shadows of the library swallowing his figure as he took a step back into the dark.

He didn't say goodbye, and you didn't try to stop him.

You just sat there in the quiet library, listening to the rain, watching the boy you loved walk away into a freezing, blue twilight, leaving you behind in the light.

[yeuxverts00]

Chapter 35 — Bloodtoll — Wake Up

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[dumbassfics]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Posted from my honeymoon, here’s chapter two of Punch Sister, Punch. A little more procedure and exposition in this one, but I hope it gives more depth to the world of the Service and the characters therein.

[yeuxverts00]

Chapter 34 — Bloodtoll — And Should Therefore Be Treated With Great Caution

https://archiveofourown.org/works/72727551/chapters/232253376

[oldgreenerteacups]

Anonymous asked:

Hi :)

Out of curiosity what is the most promising/best Tomione you’ve read?

greenerteacups:

Hi! It really depends on the genre. Tomione has different flavors depending on what the author's trying to do, and what they like about the relationship.

Unfortunately, all three of these are unfinished — one of the great misfortuntes of the T/H pairing is that for every good finished fic there's a dozen Pulitzer-worthy WIPs. It's like the Kobayashi Maru of the fanfic community. You pretty much have to accept that you're just here for a vibe and hopefully some kissing, and stuff like "story beats" and "plot resolution" are for the weak.

Birds of a Feather, for best 1930's Hogwarts AU. The Tom-Hermione friendship is extravagantly well-developed, and it has this excellent sensitivity for how Tom thinks and feels that allows the author to move him subtly away from canon without ever hitting OOC territory.

Nothing Like the Sun, for the exact opposite dynamic: a 1990's Hogwarts AU where Tom and Hermione are very much not friends, and in fact hate each other. Their dynamic is very much enemies-with-benefits. (The benefits are magic.)

The most cheerful, though, has to be take the bit between your teeth. It's a 1990s Hogwarts AU where Tom is very much not a proto-Dark Lord at all. It's punchy and comic — really almost a crack fic, in the later chapters — but it's written with such technical flair that you don't care. Plus, there are some genuinely breathtaking moments of sexual tension. The author said it was their first fanfic, which, if you've ever tried to write anything yourself, is the kind of statement that makes you want to cry and punch a wall.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230519091618/www.tumblr.com/greenerteacups

[yeuxverts00]

Chapter 33 — Bloodtoll — It Is a Beautiful and Terrible Thing

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works