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Death, he had come to learn, was a luxury. It was a bitter relief that didn’t come quickly for the desperate, for people like Draco Malfoy.
Death was indeed still there—an inevitable shadow—and yet it invaded him in a slow, agonizing manner. It started with the crumbling of his mind: all the green and old hope inside him was wiped off like the clearing of condensation on glass. That crumbling had frankly begun long ago, but Draco felt everything more acutely now that he was caged in a cell with only gray walls to stare at.
The first day he arrived in Azkaban, Draco knew this: that his mother was fine and had managed to narrowly miss the sentence by receiving house arrest instead. He remembered dropping to his knees in relief as soon as the verdict had been placed, because at least she didn’t have to suffer through the same thing as what his father had to go through: to receive a dementor’s kiss and rot alive in a place that wasn’t home.
On the first day he arrived in Azkaban, Draco knew this: even if, by some miracle, he didn't go insane after the first night, he wouldn't be surviving for long.
So, when he found his sanity still intact even after a few days had passed, he thought, oh. I’m fucked.
Then hours passed—days wasted staring at everything in his cell and yet nothing at all.
Azkaban smelled like the sea, like the beach he once went to with his parents when he was barely five, when he was just a blabbering child and free of the weights placed upon his shoulders. Often Draco would close his eyes, imagining he was somewhere on that very same beach and building a sandcastle instead of being locked up in a space far too small for him with his mind being the only thing keeping him alive.
His mind had always been the loudest sound in his cell. It rang with the imagery of the endless corridors of Hogwarts, the train with the compartment full of sweets, the sight of a beautiful green-eyed boy in a shop wearing a robe that was far too big for his body, the same boy, who left an unanswered handshake in his wake. Sometimes, and just sometimes, his mind thought of death. What if you kill yourself? It would ask, and Draco wouldn’t know how to answer except curl up on his hard mattress, his skin covered in grime from the cold damp floor.
He felt like he was sinking, drowning.
Draco felt like he was going to die.
And then came the day when the Auror assigned to him made an offer. A trade of some sort: for all of his memories of a random person in his life to be fed to the dementors in exchange for a few minutes outside every day until the end of his sentence. Twenty minutes to be exact. Twenty minutes every single day in the courtyard for the next five years.
Draco, of course, had been reluctant. There was far too big of a chance for the dementors to choose the people who are dear to him, like his parents or maybe, Merlin forbid they do, Severus.
But then again, they were talking about the possibility of basking in sunlight instead of being stuck in this dirty cell, even if the time it gave barely amounted to anything. There was a chance that people unknown to him would be erased from his life and Draco wouldn't bat an eye to it.
When he was just a boy, he would say that he was an opportunist, simply because he liked how the word rested on his tongue. But he knew, deep down, that he was selfish. Draco was selfish. He wasn't a Gryffindor, clad in mighty red and gold, heart on his sleeve, as he sacrifices himself for a cause in the name of bravery.
In the end, throat dry, he said, "Okay. I'll do it."
And when the dementor started taking memories of a boy in a robe shop, of his verdant green eyes and his carefree, boyish laugh, Draco couldn't do anything except writhe under the restraints pinning him down, screaming no, no, don't take him away from me—!
Draco was selfish, sure, but not for him.
(Never for him.)
(Whenever Draco thought about him, it was with an amalgamation of hatred and the need to be known. It was a conundrum, the way he had always wanted green eyes to stay focused on his very being despite the fragile relationship they had—if it could even amount to one, since relationship is a strong, strong word—and that difficult conundrum itself was the one thing that kept him going throughout the war. There was a chance that he had placed enough dent in Harry Potter’s life to make him remember Draco's whole existence, enough to save him in the end—because that’s what Potter is, right? A Savior?—and Draco wouldn’t have to go through this nightmare again, would be taken out of this shitty cell and accept redemption and—)
Draco knew he had begun crying.
Though, in hindsight, he knew how futile it was, to be pleading like a fool.
After all, dementors wouldn’t hear the pleading of a begging man, much less of one who was already dying.
*
The sky in Azkaban was a perpetual shade of gray stretching out beyond.
The courtyard was a mockery of nature itself: a failed afterimage of the meadows Draco had grown up running in, for it had been concrete instead of grass, low-hanging dark rain clouds instead of the brilliant blue clear skies.
It was somewhere along the way that Draco had gotten himself drunk on the Calming Draught they would off-handedly dish out to prisoners. There was potion running through his veins, filling out all the empty passages inside his body and overtaking his blood. There was the half-forgotten voice of Madam Pomfrey ringing in his ears, chiding of how much of a fool he had been for not thinking twice before downing vials after vials of Calming Draught.
Too late, once he had said to the disfigured memory of the Hogwarts nurse. Besides, Draco liked it this way: the whip wounds marking his back reduced to a dull throb, his brain sufficiently sluggish so he couldn’t form a single thought (the main reason why he’d stopped clawing and bleeding dry the forearm which hosted the Dark Mark), and the senses in his body lessened just enough in order to ignore the freezing temperature.
Draco was surviving; it was all he had to do.
It was all he could do.
He needed to survive to the day when he would meet his mother again, accompany her during the long hours of house arrest, and help her tend the garden and family heirlooms.
He needed to survive to meet Granger and Weasley again, just to prove them wrong and that Draco wasn’t all as cowardly as what they thought he was.
He needed to… There was a boy he needed to meet…
A boy…?
(There was a blurry shape of a boy haunting the periphery of his mind each hour of the day. His face was an indistinct mosaic mess and his skin golden bronze and sun-kissed, complementing his wild dark hair. He wore a Quidditch outfit, red and gold complimenting his skin. The boy was always there at cornerstones, holding a wand (also blurred and painfully unfamiliar) at him, a spell poised on the tip of the boy’s tongue, ready to turn the world bloody if he so wished to. It would’ve been scary, yes, but Draco didn’t know who he was or who he could be, and it really made all the threats dissipate.
In the end, Draco had decided to name the boy Mr. Faceless in hopes that he would somehow accompany the horrible days Draco would have to go through.)
Draco shook his head.
What a silly, silly thought.
He opted to lay down on hard concrete to stare at gray clouds passing above instead, freer than he would ever be. Wind lapped itself in cool strokes against his cheeks, its scent mingled with the saltiness of the sea and the static undercurrent drifting through the ozone.
The courtyard was a mockery of nature itself, and yet Draco had never felt so alive compared to this.
*
There was something wrong with him.
He no longer remembered what day it was, how long he had been trapped in this living hellhole, how much time he had lost like grains of sand slipping through his fingers.
Draco knew that he was still who he used to be—eleven and arrogant beyond belief, sixteen and lonely, a ghost being his only friend, eighteen and dying (and going insane) in a cell colder than the Manor during winter—but everything felt muddy, like there was a cavernous hole that had dug itself just inside of his heart, replacing the steady thump thump thump with a writhing mass of mixture of all the ugly characteristics that had once defined him as a person.
He had also, somehow, acquired a hobby of laughing at blank gray walls, relishing in the pain that shot up from his broken ribs—a gift from his wonderful Auror guard—each time he did so. Whenever Draco got bored of doing that, he would always start a chat with Mr. Faceless who stood at the darkest corner of his cell. He particularly loved teasing Mr. Faceless for the pair of eyes (black and wrong and terrifying—) he had sprouted on his twisted features and, as expected after each time, Mr. Faceless would not respond to his jibes.
He would only stare Draco down, big eyes unblinking, as his weapon was aimed precisely in between Draco’s brows.
That's alright, though. Draco had gotten used to it like a resurfacing habit.
What he hadn’t gotten used to, however, were the dreams that haunted his sleep.
They came in through an unfocused filter—a vignette with frayed edges, understandable from a glance, but made less sense the more you stared at it.
Calming Draughts could only do so much, Draco had thought at some point. He would only be risking himself to be an addict (sadly he is one already) if he were to try and quell the dreams down with the potion. Besides, they weren't all that bad. Most of it were:
Sitting in the Great Hall for breakfast, slowly savoring his food as he watched Granger and Weasel who had their heads bent down, furiously whispering about something and bloody Merlin why don’t they scoot closer there’s literally a person-wide gap between them—
Laying on the cold-tiled bathroom floor as the putrid smell of blood began to fill the air and turn it metallic, burning his lungs as he tried to breathe. His chest was one big horrible open wound, dyeing his pale skin into a disgusting shade of dark crimson and there was… there was someone watching him from above. Yes, there was—
Standing on the Astronomy Tower just the opposite of Dumbledore, wand trained on the old man and tears running down his cheeks. Desperation still shot through him despite the murky gauze veiling the dream, regret lining his edges as he prayed (he never prayed. Did he wish instead?) for someone to take him out of his own self-made mess. Someone like—
So, yes, he would soon get used to them.
It really was just a matter of time, seeing how he had even gotten used to the daily beatings his (still wonderful) Auror would give him.
Draco was eleven when he received an unanswered handshake from a forgotten person. Was sixteen when he knew he was but a mere pawn on a chessboard. Was eighteen when he attended a trial without having a single defense to his name, a scorned boy awaiting his timely end.
It was fine. Draco would get through this.
*
(There was a dream which struck out the most.
It was a dream forged in brimstone and hellfire; of a memory where soot clung to the hems of his robes and to his pale skin, staining them a horrible dull gray. It was a dream where fire licked the seams of his vision, threatening to swallow him whole if he didn’t move quickly enough, just like how its burning talons had claimed Crabbe the fool—the boy whom Draco hadn’t had the chance to call friend.
He both remembered and dreamed of climbing a near-toppling tower of trinkets as a sea of destruction raged on underneath. He remembered crying, scrabbling with bleeding nails for anything to hold on, thinking I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
And then there was someone (a vengeful angel?), who hauled him up by the arm, putting Draco just behind him on his broom.
They flew away from the scorching mess, past the ashes and flickering embers dancing all around. It felt, Draco thought, a lot like freedom, as if he was worth a chance and was deserving of being saved despite all his sins and mistakes. Draco remembered something unfurling in his chest, a thread uncoiling from deep inside his belly, something that felt a lot like longing—like a neglected love from years ago in a random robe shop coming to life again, like—
At that point, things would come to an abrupt halt. The memory would be cut off, burning alive like the same flames that haunted him, and Draco would wake, greeting the dusty surroundings of his cell once more.
He couldn’t remember who the boy on the broom was.)
*
Once, after being escorted back from a trip to the courtyard, Draco asked: “Have you ever felt unloved?”
It wasn’t at all a niche thing to ask about, that much Draco knew. It was a question that even the most normal could answer. A question that even squibs and mudbloods (muggleborns muggleborns muggleborns) and animals could find the answer within themselves, the only drawback being that it relied heavily on honesty.
Though, perhaps it wasn’t the same case for Mr. Faceless, even if Draco had insisted thoroughly that he was human and was capable of talk.
Mr. Faceless stayed silent, his blurred face looking horribly contorted as it was drenched by the pale moonlight oozing through the grates of his cell window. There was blood running down his features from where his forehead was supposed to be, crimson blood dripping to the grimy concrete floor, forming a puddle.
“Stop, you’ll cause a flood,” Draco murmured.
The blood flow slowed to a trickle and eventually stopped, leaving the blood to pool around the boy’s shoes. It smelled damp, like metal mixing with mildew, like the stench of an unused bathroom from sixth year.
Mr. Faceless stood there, drenched in red just like his outfit.
Draco laughed, the sound of it bouncing harshly on the walls. “No, I suppose you’ve always been loved, right?”
The cell, as always, was terribly still.
*
Memories had begun to erase themselves from his brain.
The realization didn’t come to Draco immediately. Instead, it came in the small, slow hesitant strokes of thoughts which he had. It came like a morning drizzle, light enough to be mistaken as dew, unnoticed until when it got stronger and into a rainfall; only then would it be too late to grab an umbrella.
The first thing Draco realized—and yes, rather belatedly—was a missing memory from fourth year.
It was Pansy’s birthday, and like any other birthday celebrated in the Slytherin common room, it was normal for classmates to compete on who could present a much better, opulent gift. Utterly hedonistic, truly, but that was the way of life in Slytherin.
In any case, Draco had won that year. A given, of course, knowing how much care he would put into his gifts. And he had taken pride in them, always remembering the items he had presented each year, letting his ever-flawless mind do the job for him.
That is until it couldn’t anymore.
Pansy’s birthday party came in a series of distorted and ripped-up scenes, as if the thread of memory had the same crisscrossed wounds as the ones that had landed on his chest years ago.
And then, after the problem had made itself known, Draco noticed with both a jolt and a shudder how he had forgotten what it felt like to hold magic with his hands. Had forgotten the feeling when coils of pure magic would loop itself around his skin, centering on the pads of his fingers as it waits for his orders. Had forgotten the very essence that made him a wizard.
(He was fucked. Fucked fucked fucked fucked—)
And it was with manic laughter and tears did he finally rip himself away from the thought, instead opting to drown himself with another vial of Calming Draught that was sitting just next to his mattress. (It tasted as vile as usual, burning as he fought to swallow it down. Maybe it was because his body tried to reject it. Who would know? He was the only one here, after all.)
Draco found himself unable to stop laughing, the loud, grating sound of it filling the hollow cavity between his ribs and his heart.
He laughed until his throat was dry and hoarse, the taste of salty tears (disgusting) persistent on his tongue, constant aches hanging in his chest like dull aftershocks.
Mr. Faceless only watched.
*
The one thing that Draco wanted to do the most was apologize to his mother.
He wanted to apologize for many things: for being such a failure to the family line, an embarrassment and a coward and a disgrace all at once; for not trying harder to clear the Malfoy name from filth; for being eighteen and going insane in a too-small cell instead of dying in the battlefield for an honorable cause.
There was a thought that came up unbidden, a distant wonder whether his mother missed him as much as Draco missed her. He wanted it to be true, of course, because that meant that at least someone out there was waiting for his return and wishing for his well-being.
Meant that he was missed, that he was cared for.
Idly, Draco wondered as well if his mother would accept the idea that her son is more than willing to die even if it's by his own hand.
(And really, he should know better; because death truly was a luxury which he couldn't afford.)
*
The Aurors had begun to notice his behavior.
Draco had heard of passing rumors—because of course a rumor mill existed in a place like this—from the guards that sometimes would talk in the courtyard. He heard snatched conversations, the click of a tongue, do you know they’re sending Mind Healers to this dump? Must be daft, the lot of them. And Draco knew they were going to send a Mind Healer (friend? Could they perhaps be a new friend?) to him as well.
It was certainly true when his guard (bless Maverick and his ever-kind heart) walked into his cell one day and told him he was going to have a visitor. Maverick left before Draco could answer though, but not before he planted a heel to the side of Draco’s stomach.
There was silence afterward, spanning out for so long that Draco had begun to doubt whether earlier was all a figment of his hallucinations.
It wasn’t.
There was a man around his age who walked inside, one hand closing the door gently while the other held files so tightly to a point that Draco distantly wondered how ruined those parchments could be.
There was a man with a pair of glasses resting on his nose, black frames resting across his sun-kissed cheeks. It was a man with hair the same color as the ink spilled across the sky when dusk ends, a wild mess that seemed to make his eyes stand out more—green, unlike how the Manor’s garden had been, after months of neglect (long, terrifying months of hosting Him in a place which Draco had called home since he drew his first breath), but like the cutting tail of a muttered Killing Curse, hauntingly bright even in the dark of his cell.
(And they were pretty. Those green eyes were so, so beautiful.)
Draco blinked.
"Malfoy," the visitor greeted, not quite bothering to hide the sneer that contorted his face.
Draco had noticed it, of course; the obvious venom lacing the man's voice which he used to practically spit Draco's name as if he amounted to no more than a few knuts. There was an edge to the way he held himself, like the thick smell of ozone foreboding the arrival of a thunderstorm.
He had tried to make sense of it, that animosity which seemingly ran deep within the curtain of tension veiling the atmosphere between them. Draco had supposed it was because of the war, especially after knowing just how many hated him for being a boy who had gotten dragged to the wrong side of war. But the more he looked into it, the more he learned this: that there was prejudice molded into the very features of the man in front of him; a hatred that must've had spanned out for years tucked into the very furrow of his brows.
Like the man knew him personally, not just through some rubbish from the Prophet.
Cocking his head to the side, finally, Draco said, "Yes?"
It was submission; a way of presenting his compliance on a silver platter for the man to accept and see. Draco wanted him to know that he had not an ounce of recognition towards him. It was a silent confession, offered with a blankness that had etched itself permanently onto his face. A result of the Draught abuse, not that Draco minded the laxness in his muscles anymore, for it gave him a faux facade of innocence. (The same look of innocence he would never have again after the war.)
At that, the man's face screwed up a fraction more.
“Don’t.” He breathed, “Don’t play with me. What are you trying to get at?”
“I don’t know,” Draco said, nothing but honesty in his answer. "You haven't even told me your name yet."
And that very same honesty must've shown too on his face—all unguarded and lacking the cold silver mask that used to find home on his face; the second skin which borne the name Malfoy with all of its pressure that came from doing so. It was with rapt attention did Draco watch how the man’s anger slowly but surely began to morph into confusion. It was subtle, that change, the way his brows slowly came up alongside the slight widening of green eyes. It wouldn’t have been obvious if one didn’t pay much attention.
What was more: there was denial and fatigue underneath all the layers of the man’s confusion.
(Draco hadn’t had the time to think about the situation. Though if he had, he would’ve asked about one thing:
Why can he read this stranger almost as if he was an extension of Draco himself?)
“...You’re not joking.”
“No, I am not,” Draco answered seriously at the man’s look of complete incomprehension despite holding in the sharp tang of amusement rising from inside his guts. This man, perhaps his rumored Mind Healer, had come in and offered up a human expression that had once turned so awfully foreign to Draco. He was more human than Mr. Faceless nor even Maverick, the Auror who wouldn’t give Draco anything but familiar derision.
At this moment, Draco felt like he finally met another human being.
There was a sort of giddiness that overtook him, powerful enough to make him feel dizzy and lovely enough that Draco started laughing.
He laughed at the man’s genuine surprise, at the sudden step back he took, eyes alarmed and hand no doubt reaching for his pocketed wand. Draco grinned at Mr. Faceless who stood right next to him, in hopes to say do you see this? Do you see the gift I’ve been granted?
There is a human talking to me. That hasn’t happened in quite some time.
“I apologize,” Draco said finally, arms curled around his sides, blood on his lips from when he bit too hard in an attempt to stop laughing. “Will you tell me your name now?”
That seemed to shake the man out of his reverie.
“I’m - I’m Harry.” The stranger—his visitor, Harry—licked his bottom lip. Bemused. “I’ll be your Mind Healer until you’re let out.”
“You’ll be here for a long time, then.”
“Yeah,” Harry admitted, some visible reluctance dragging out the word. Draco smiled at it, all edges and coated in blood.
“Are you here on internship or punishment?” Draco asked, savoring the weird satisfaction coursing through his veins as he watched Harry wince. Guilty.
"Internship," Harry stiffly said. With a sigh, he dropped to the ground and mirrored Draco's crossed legs. “I didn’t mean to put our… past in the way of my emotions.”
Or the lack of thereof, was what came unsaid after, because now Harry knew there was something terribly wrong with Draco.
He hummed, letting his head rest on the hard wall behind him and his brain lulled into a weird sense of contentment from the potions running through his blood. "Alright."
There was a stilted silence that came in the form of crescent-shaped ocean waves crashing against the shore. The air was stale and heavily laden with salt. Draco could almost feel grains of sand on his fingertips; could see it filling his small cell. He had tried to make a sandcastle with that sand once, but he quickly gave up upon realizing there was only air which he played with.
All along, Harry kept his gaze on Draco as if he was a code that needed unpuzzling; both a question and a dilemma left unsolved. As if Draco was one of the priceless heirlooms in Malfoy Manor, holding too many secrets for the hand to count.
Draco found himself returning that gaze, feeling the itch to dissect Harry (the first human to ever interact this long with him in months) grow ever stronger beneath his skin. He wanted to cut him open and let him bleed—to rip the answers by force; why do you stare at me like that? Why are you so wary of me? Like I’m someone who came back from the dead? And Draco could do it right now. Would do it right now if it weren’t for the two obvious things that blocked him from doing so.
First: Draco Malfoy was a boy who had been taught etiquette since he was barely three. He was not going to force answers from a stranger just because he was desperate to.
Second: he was so—oh, so awfully—curious with how his Mind Healer will continue.
It had been a long wait (then again Draco couldn't say for sure, considering how time felt like an absurd concept for him now), but Harry finally made a move to open his mouth, his voice echoing out in the emptiness of Draco’s cell:
“You could talk to me,” Harry said, serious and kind, as if Draco hadn't just freaked him out earlier. "Everything that happened - everything that comes to your mind. You could talk to me about them."
Draco pulled his legs up to his chest in a futile attempt to hide the thrum of his heart.
It was salvation. Was temptation in play from the sound of it. Draco wanted it, that offer which sounded too good to be true; the insidious apple of Eve hiding in plain sight. Harry was a random visitor that he had talked to for no more longer than an hour, a man who bore his own masks as he was tasked to fix Draco’s fucked up head. Harry was human; could be either a saint or a devil in disguise depending on what he wanted to be.
Draco would be a fool to trust him with all his secrets, (a fool like Crabbe in a burning room, the boy who sabotaged his own future and died a few years too quickly,) but he found himself wanting to anyway. He wanted to tell Harry of the first day he had spent in this hellhole, of his passing thoughts and dreams, of the sand around where they sat, and of Mr. Faceless who stood in the corner. Draco wanted to tell Harry of everything and nothing at all. Wanted to feel human again.
All he had to do was give in. Maybe then he will be. (Human again.)
There was a man in front of him, offering help; a way out.
Here was a man who reminded Draco of the courtyard, wonderful enough to make him feel alive despite being eighteen (nineteen?) and slowly rotting.
In the end, as he stared at—drowned in—verdant green eyes, Draco said:
“You’re beautiful.”