Work Text:
Azkaban. July 1998.
Waves crash distantly.
Waves shatter distantly against the shore.
Waves break, crumble, distort, and fragment into shards.
Waves erode. Waves clutch the sand and make it smaller; waves meet the island and make it smaller. Waves seize the island and drag it under the sea. Drowning. Airless.
Are the waves crashing closer, yet? Is there any shore left?
Draco would not mind if the sea flooded up to take him, now. He has been here forever (five days). He will be here forever (until the sea drags everything under). (Another three days, until his trial date).
The sound of the waves is the only grounding thing. The only normal thing. Is it really the same sea that sounded during his childhood holidays in the South of France? He cannot quite remember the feeling, the golden light and soft sea spray.
Fenris wolf has eaten the sun. Here, everything is dark. The smell of the sea is abrasive; salt encrusts the iron, corroded save for the wards.
The wards’ magic is stifling. Oppressive. A headache in which one’s brain feels too big for its tight-pressing skull. St Margaret Clitherow was pressed to death in 1586, according to St John’s Book of Magical Martyrs. It took fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, slowed by the weight of 700 pounds.
Waves crash. Near, far, everywhere. There is nothing else.
A hooded figure passes. Guards making the rounds. Rattling breath; Draco can’t tell if the sound comes from the Dementor or his own chest. Drowning, airless. In Sixth year, he tried to cast the Cruciatus for the first time. The Demontors keep sticking him back into the feeling of it. The taste on his tongue.
It wouldn’t have worked, had Potter given him a chance. Instead, he ended up in shreds on the bathroom floor. But that part wasn’t the bad memory.
I want to hurt him. I want him to hurt like I hurt. I want him to know. Crucio. Crucio. Crucio.
He hadn’t, not really. The despair lay half in the evil of it, half in the shame of failure.
Choking on tears (drowning), hesitating just a second too long to consider… Crucio. Consider the pain Potter would feel. Consider what they would do to his mother when he couldn’t fulfil his assignment. (Where was his mother now? Not here, please not here.) Consider what they would do to him.
The waves are excavating the shore, breaking apart the island; Draco has already ceased to breathe.
Potter’s narrowed eyes, slits of green under his scowling brow. Potter’s raised wand. Potter’s grip on the reins, never hesitating, never failing to catch Draco in his worst moments. Never failing to cause all of Draco’s worst moments.
Draco is surprised that he can even think of Potter, with all the Dementors around. Potter is the golden light of the French seaside. Bright, good. Thoughts of Potter did not belong in this place.
Crucio. Crucio. Crucio.
Potter never stood a chance of losing. Good. Potter always had a card up his sleeve. Potter is probably celebrating with all his little Gryffindor friends (the ones who are still alive). Probably, Potter is having triumphant and heroic sex with Ginevra Weasley.
Crucio. Hurt like I hurt.
If he is thinking of Draco at all, it is sure to be hateful.
Good.
Rattling breath, dark cloak outside. Crucio.
Potter could not possibly hate Draco more than Draco himself. They had so much in common, that way. (Had Draco almost just laughed, in this airless place?) (Is Draco going mad? It was sure to happen eventually. Maybe the sea will take him first.) The waves recede, attack, regroup, make another barrage.
Draco is pressed under 700 pounds of stones. The weight of what he had done; the weight of what he had failed to do.
How golden and glorious, the hatred in Potter’s green eyes. I am a worm, not a man; people insult me and despise me. This, the Dementors cannot take from him. The parted mouth, distorted in revulsion. The shock of pure loathing, wrong and out of place in a virtuous face. One can tell when one stands before Goodness. The strange sublimity of it: the beauty; the terror. Each in superlatives, excesses of feeling, floods in which to drown.
Draco does not feel himself mistaken in taking Potter as the moral arbiter of his universe. Justice with her scales. He had seen to it that justice would be done. He is Draco’s absolution. He is the saltwater sea that baptises and purifies. He is the flood of drowning tears in Sixth year and the flood of drowning blood. He is the saltwater running from Draco’s wounds.
The waves lap at Draco’s peripheries. Crucio. Had the sound of the sea ever been real, or had he just felt he ought to be able to hear it?
Draco loves every part of Potter; Potter hates every part of Draco; Draco loves him all the more. This, the Dementors cannot take from him. Golden flash of lightning on Potter’s forehead, illuminating the darkness of the cell. Striking the waters of the flooding cell. Draco is filled with electricity; it is something like magic. He is pulled apart.
Waves crash distantly.
Crucio.