Chapter Text
It seemed as though no matter when and where, no matter the universe and the lifetime — Draco Malfoy always ended up making the wrong choice.
His thumb rubbed against the splintering wood of his wand. Draco knew very well that it would not serve him, not with the way it had cracked and crumbled every time he tried to use it to conduct the flow of his magic. It did not matter to him either way. It hadn’t for a very long time, and he was especially uncaring about it today.
He stood with his back towards the sea. The man across him stood within arm’s reach, yet Draco felt as if the distance between them had stretched into a yawning abyss that seemed to open its mouth wider every time he tried to close it. Such was their fate, he supposed.
‘How many times will we stand here, across from each other?’ Draco asked himself. His heart had long since shattered, but its ghost continued to ache in his chest as he stared at the face of a thousand memories. The coast, the cliff, the cabin — the crude belief that this time, it’d work out.
Things never did.
“Malfoy,” the other called out — mercy ingrained into every syllable that left his mouth. Draco stared at the hand reaching out to him. His cracked lips stretched into a thin smile. The irony of the situation was so sad that he wanted to laugh. “Draco.”
The sound of his name seemed as if it were offering him salvation.
Words spill out of Draco’s mouth. Though he wasn’t sure of what he said, he knew it was enough to stoke the fire that lit up the other’s face. He watched those viridescent eyes glare, the way his lips curled downwards and his brows knit into such a familiar scowl. An expression that had always been especially reserved for the blond.
The words do not stop. Draco didn’t even feel his mouth move, though he knew it did. He could only hear the sound of the crashing tide, the sound of his name echoing from a mouth he’d only kiss the corners of, the sound of a memory that had faded into a dream. A dream of a cabin, of a cliff and of the coast they now stood upon.
In Draco’s head, he was holding onto a hand of which his own was twice the size of. The man before him was smiling at him in the eye of Draco’s mind. Draco was blind to his scowl, deaf to the words coming out of his own mouth.
His wand splintered in his hand. It began to shift, as if it were a strip of clay that someone had begun to re-mould.
Draco heard only a single spell utter from his mouth.
“Avada—”
He watched those viridescent irises widen in shock, in betrayal—
It cut like a knife slicing across the ghost of his cardiac muscle. Harry’s anger was like a cold mercy being pressed like a hot iron against Draco’s skin.
“—Kedavra.”
Draco watched the shock of green burst from his hand. The electric warmth of the spell seemed to burn into him. He smiled, letting the familiar hue of Harry’s eyes crash into him.
As his vision went black, Draco could only smile further. His back hit the ground. It was only when his body lay crumpled at Harry’s feet that he could think, “Ah, salvation at last.”
He heard the echo of a child’s voice.
And then, he slipped.
❦
No matter how many times he’d go through it, the vertigo never seemed to get any better. The loud, shrill beep of the blower had morphed into a stubborn, neverending ringing in his ears as Draco lost his balance, almost as if someone had pulled the floor from beneath his feet like it was a rug he wasn’t supposed to be standing on.
As Draco tumbled through both space and time, the world slowly spun into place around him. The ringing flattened out into a deafening silence, broken only by the familiar crash of waves of the Scottish coast.
Fuck. Draco’s nausea had less to do with his disorientation and now more to do with where he found himself. He rose from where he lay crumpled on the sand.
The sun seemed to have just risen, whereas it had been setting the last time he’d been here. The last time he’d been here, he’d stood with his back to the sea. Now, he faced it while he was on his knees.
Unbidden, the ghost of his heart began to pulse. A sob tore through his body and he crumpled on himself once more, crying in a way he hadn’t since the first time his Father had dragged him out of his Mother’s chambers.
The ghost of his lives seemed to dance around him. They called out to the wicked man, calls of his name, of love, Draco, Dray, brother, Dragon, Mon Fleur, Malfoy, Papa—
And all Draco could think was, “Not again.”