The Last House

It was exhausting, tedious, watching the others during their ‘free time'.

They always did the same thing, truly calling into question if any of them were free or had ever been free.

Billy did push-ups, sit-ups, and smoked down his rationed pack of muggle cigarettes. Tony drew complicated muggle contraptions, muttering the entire time about electricity and fifty other terms that were impossible to understand. Spencer read, he always read, silently in a corner.

It was dreadfully boring, just as dull and lifeless as every other day at Last House Ranch.

"Newbies will be here soon," Tony said suddenly, driving a sigh from Draco. "Who wants to bet that one of them tried to run?"

"Nobody's that stupid," Billy said, pausing his workout routine to light a cigarette. Draco lifted an eyebrow at him and Billy scowled. "Fuck off, Blondie. I just died, cut me some slack."

"Technically, you didn't die," Spencer said, never looking away from his book. "You suffered temporary heart failure and were revived. It's a different experience than true death."

"Yeah, thanks, Spence."

Billy rolled his eyes at Draco and they silently commiserated over the insufferable roommates they had. Billy was a mindless jock, but Tony and Spencer were two of the most intelligent human beings that Draco had ever met and it made them impossible to cohabitate with.

If Draco were ever allowed to leave the ranch, he thought that he might never look at another book again simply to avoid the reminder of Tony and Spencer. Though they could say the same for Draco, if he had any dedicated way to pass his free time outside of daydreaming.

Draco dreamed of his life before the war, his classes and his friends, his silly ideals of becoming a professional quidditch player or the potioneer who would cure lycanthropy. On the worst days at the ranch, Draco even dreamed about Azkaban. It had been horrifying, but it was at least expected horror.

Nothing changed at the ranch, not in the months that Draco had been there with the others. It was the same routine, the same conversations. Some days everyone was too tired by the work and bothered by their therapy sessions to say much of anything.

Those days, the ones spent in silence, were somehow worse than the days where Draco had to listen to the others chatter on about a number of things he didn't understand or care about.

It would be different that day, Draco knew it. They had all spent their work rotations the day before building four new beds and setting them up in the barn. There were others joining them, a new set of unfortunate bastards to be tossed into the hell that they were all trapped within.

Everyone dropped their belongings when they could hear tires turning on the gravel drive. Nobody said that they couldn't go outside on the porch, so Draco slipped his boots on and led the way for the others. Billy stood beside Draco and squinted out at the white work truck while Tony and Spencer hovered just behind them, whispering conspiracies on what problems the others would have.

According to Doctor Morris, they would be there if they were difficult to deal with, ‘traumatized', and mentally unwell. All of which explained how Draco found himself being admitted and none of which explained why the first person to climb out of the bed of the truck was there.

"Potter?" Draco couldn't hold his tongue when he saw Harry Potter himself hop down on the gravel. Potter swiveled his head and Draco saw his jaw drop when he spotted Draco.

"Malfoy?" Potter took a step toward Draco and was stopped by Charlie Weasley. It had been an adjustment for Draco to live and cohabitate with Charlie Weasley, it had been shocking to share a house with Regulus Black, Draco couldn't begin to fathom how Harry Potter came to be admitted.

"Friend of yours?" Billy asked while Potter was directed away from the house and toward the barn. The others were unknown to Draco, only three poor saps doomed to rot on the ranch. Tony must have recognized one of them though, he made a sound of annoyance as a man with one arm climbed out of the truck.

"Friend? No," Draco said, correctly. There were many labels to put on Draco's relationship with Potter, none of them would ever be ‘friendship'. Draco still watched him be led into the barn and wondered how he came to find himself there.

"How quick do you think he'll break?" Billy asked, blowing a cloud of smoke across the ground and hiding the others from view for a moment.

How fast would Saint Potter break? How long would it take him to quit fighting the rules, the routines, the invasive questions that would keep him awake at night?

"He'll be the first one," Draco said confidently. The taller they were, the harder they fell.

The new group wasn't at lunch, Draco remembered his first few days of hunger when he hadn't yet earned a meal for himself. Draco sat beside Regulus and waited to see if he would bring up Potter on his own or not.

"Sirius's godson is here," Regulus murmured, his lips hardly moving to make the words. "He looks like his father."

Draco heard that before, how Potter looked like his father. "He has his mother's eyes," he said, the usual addition to Potter's description.

Regulus hummed and it was all he said about Potter. They passed around the dishes that Weasley and Tony had prepared for lunch and ate mostly in silence. Draco was preoccupied by curiosities on what landed Potter in hell, the others were probably reminiscing on their own first day at the ranch.

After lunch, Draco went with Trent to begin their rotation of cleaning. Trent changed over the laundry while Draco folded shirts and entertained himself with picturing Potter being made to do menial work. Trent never talked to Draco and so Draco finished his rotation in housework with nothing but his own thoughts to entertain him.

The ‘buddies' were pulled after work rotation to get the new group settled in and inform them of the schedule. Since the sun was shining and Draco was tired of the house, he sat on the porch with Spencer for a while. Sundays always passed by slowly, dragging on without the usual routines to make time move faster.

"Are you thinking about your friend?" Spencer asked Draco abruptly, while Draco had actually been thinking of Potter.

"He isn't my friend," Draco reminded him. Spencer only stared and Draco despised that, he despised the way that Spencer acted as if he knew every thought that went through his head. Spencer was a muggle, a police officer of sorts. Spencer couldn't understand the complexities of Draco's war, the history between Draco and Potter.

"Potter and I were classmates," Draco explained curtly. A lock of his hair fell in his forehead and Draco tried to smooth it back automatically, not that it remained in place without any sort of effective hair product. At least there was no regulus access to mirrors, Draco couldn't even see if he looked as horrid as he felt.

"Do you think that his presence will set back your progress?" Spencer asked.

Progress? No. Draco wasn't under any delusion about making ‘progress'. Doctor Morris had achieved what he wanted - Draco did the chores, he did the therapies. Draco moved up levels and he kissed the good doctor's arse in his appointments. None of it had Draco and closer to being released.

Thus, progress was a joke.

"Possibly," Draco allowed. The barn door was closed and Draco wondered if Potter would be the one to attempt to sneak away at night. It had been Billy who tried on Draco's first night, an attempt he was quick to never retry.

"Sometimes I feel as if I'm making no progress at all," Spencer mused, echoing Draco's own prior thought. "Then I think that it's my negative self-images that are holding me back."

Draco started to speak and then clamped his mouth shut. He had yet to find evidence, but Draco believed that Doctor Morris was able to listen to their conversations and hear anything they shared in private. If Draco were to tell Spencer that he believed they were all being intentionally held-back, it would surely come up in Draco's next individual therapy session.

It happened before and Draco was quite capable of learning from some mistakes.

"Perhaps," Draco agreed instead, his eyes still on the barn. It was possible that Spencer was sabotaging himself, it was also possible that Doctor Morris didn't wish to see any of them leave. How it benefited him? Draco wasn't sure yet. But the Last House Ranch certainly wasn't saving minds and souls as Draco had been led to believe.

The new group had still not joined the others on rotations when Draco helped Weasley in the kitchen after dinner. Weasley was in charge of cooking and gardening, two things that Draco knew could be done more efficiently with a wand.

Weasley, irritatingly, took great pleasure in pulling dirty vegetables from the ground. Draco hadn't been there when they were planted, but he had helped tend to them at least once a day every day that he spent on the ranch.

"Look at this!" Weasley beamed about the basket they collected. Draco didn't see anything special about them. Food was meant to be more meaningful to Draco after he was forced to help create it, another fancy of Doctor Morris's that had yet to come true.

"You are a God," Draco said flatly, scowling when Weasley seemed to enjoy that response.

"I am kind of a God," Weasley said, bumping Draco's shoulder lightly to get inside. "You're going to miss out on canning tomorrow, Tony and my new kid will get to have all the fun."

"Which one is yours?" Draco asked him. Draco had been initially grateful to not be assigned to Weasley or his cousin, but it would have been nice to have someone who understood magic. Taylor was fine, for a muggle addicted to pills; he was strict at times, rather fun at other times. His department was horrid though and Draco despised starting his mornings with animal shite.

"His name's Eddie, he's insane," Weasley said merrily. "Here." Weasley passed the basket of vegetables to Draco along with a peeler. "I wash, you peel. Anyway, Eddie's a bit nuts. I feel for Harry though, poor kid must be going through it."

Draco peeled the skin off carrots and carefully worded his questions, determined to get at least one answer before he was faced with Potter in the morning.

"Potter's tough," Draco said. "I'm more surprised to see him than I am concerned for him."

"You're surprised that Harry Potter snapped?" Weasley looked over and lifted his eyebrow at Draco. "Mate, he fought the same war you were in. His parents are dead, he was a target from You-Know-Who for years. It's enough to make anyone a bit mental."

Draco supposed that was fair enough. Except Potter wasn't Draco, he wasn't without support and people who would bend over backwards to cater to his needs. If Potter needed therapy or rehabilitation, there were plenty of better places for a Golden Boy to receive them at.

"I think I'll go to sleep early," Weasley said after they finished the vegetables and stored them in the refrigerator for the night. "Taylor offered to take the first watch tonight, but I'm up second."

Draco had no reason to not do the same, truly. As soon as he finished his mandatory journaling, he excused himself to the room he shared with the others and threw himself in bed. It would be a sleepless night, but Draco was too used to the consequences if he were to ask for something to help him sleep.

Instead, Draco stayed up late into the night, listening to the sound of animals and the snores of Billy, wondering all the while how Potter would react when they were face-to-face the next morning.

Draco would be civil, polite. It could even be a trap set by Doctor Morris to have Potter there - Potter could be a spy, a person wearing his face and made to challenge Draco. Draco couldn't rise to any bait, he wouldn't do it.

There was nothing worth risking a trip to Doctor Morris's corridor and having to experience a new punishment. Not Potter, not any childish feud, nothing.

If Potter wanted to fight with someone, he would be best to do so with one of his new roommates. They would learn though, quite quickly, what would happen if they fought with each other.

Everyone rose on time in the morning and Draco took a brief shower, only suffering the freezing water for the minimum amount of time to clean himself. Taylor hadn't waited for Draco to join him before going to the pasture, Draco had to assume it meant that Taylor was getting his new buddy ready for the workload on the ranch.

Ever since Draco had arrived, the mornings had been warm and moist. It made Draco's skin feel horrid, as if he could never wash away the layer that clung to him. That morning was cooler, fall was finally arriving in Oklahoma.

It would have been cheerful if Draco wasn't terrified of having to complete the same daily work in the cold and snow instead of the wet heat he had grown accustomed to.

The new prisoner should have also been a good sign, he would be someone to share the workload with anyway, if he weren't obviously disabled.

As soon as Draco spotted the new man, he saw that his entire right arm was missing. All he was was a one-armed man holding a shovel and nodding to Taylor's instructions.

"Draco, morning," Taylor said when he joined them. "Meet our new client, Bucky. Bucky, this is Draco, he's my first buddy."

‘Bucky' looked at Draco with dismissive and cold blue eyes, eyes that had no ability to scare Draco away. Draco knew fear, he knew cruelty, he knew coldness - a man with one armed and a daft name wasn't going to scare Draco.

"Draco, you start the feeding, I'll get Bucky started on the stalls," Taylor ordered them. "We're moving with a sense of purpose, boys. If you want to eat breakfast, you'll remember that."

Draco had never forgotten it. Every person on the ranch had to ‘pull their weight' if they wanted such luxuries as showers and food. Draco refused when he first learned that he would be used as a house-elf, but hunger was as inescapable as the ranch itself.

Feeding the animals was fulfilling, in some ways. Draco didn't mind the animals anymore, some of them he even liked. The horses were haughty and condescending, but the cows were always grateful for Draco and the feed he brought.

The hens were wretched beings in any case, they were enough to make Draco both resent eggs and to devour them in his own small moments of payback.

Draco made his rounds on all of the animals, it became easier with every time he did it. Even lugging around the heavy bags of food and buckets of water were easier, Draco was probably stronger than he ever had been before.

All thanks to the good doctor, of course.

Draco had to carry the buckets of milk back to the house himself. They were full and Draco walked as slowly as he could, silently begging a God to take pity on him. If Draco could make it to the house with spilling any of it, he could—

"Fuck!" Draco swore under his breath when he stepped up to the porch and the bucket in his right hand tilted. It didn't spill much, only a few drops, it would still be enough that Draco's meals would be restricted for the day.

Every day on the ranch was absolute hell, to lose even half of his allotted meals made everything much worse. Draco glared down at the spilled milk and felt his eyes prickle against his will.

It was unfair and Draco wasn't allowed to complain or defend the spill as the accident it was. Draco couldn't make an argument that if he were allowed to make two trips, nothing would have spilled. All Draco could do was inform Taylor what happened and take the punishment.

"Buddy Taylor, I need to confess a crime." Draco presented himself the moment that Taylor and Bucky entered the kitchen with their arms full of eggs. Bucky didn't say anything as Draco stood straight, his feet a shoulder's length apart, his hands laced behind his back.

Taylor put his eggs in the bin for Weasley to wash later and then gave Draco permission to speak.

"This morning, on my way inside, I spilled the milk," Draco said. Every ‘moment of responsibility' had three parts to it, parts that were hammered into Draco's head:

Admission of the crime, understanding of why it was a crime on the ranch, then asking for punishment. It had been medieval and degrading the first time that Draco was forced to do it - it hadn't lost the aspect of humiliation, but Doctor Morris's punishments would be much worse than a minute of degradation.

"The milk is for our entire house to share and spilling it deprives others from enjoying it," Draco said flatly, his voice going as monotone as he could make it to hide the nerves and anger inside of him. "I would like to be punished."

"I accept your request," Taylor said. "You've deprived your peers of milk that they helped us to acquire and will give up half of your portions today to compensate."

"Thank you," Draco said. Draco's stomach churned and his face burned with anger, but he didn't run his mouth. It was possible that Draco was making progress after all.

Weasley invited them to share in the meal he made and Draco saw that Bucky and Potter would be the only two joining them. The third one, the exceedingly tall man with the nervous eyes, sat in the same corner that Draco spent many meals sitting at.

"Sam will not be sharing this meal," Regulus informed them as they began passing the dishes with breakfast inside of them. Potter looked confused when he was passed a bowl of sausages and Draco knew what he was going to ask before he did.

"I need a plate?" Potter said, looking around at the others places. They all had dishes, all of them aside from Potter and Bucky.

"You haven't earned one yet," Trent told Potter quietly. "It's Doctor Morris's grace and our efforts that allow you to eat."

"How do we eat without a plate?" Potter pushed. "Do we just… put the food on the table? And where's Eddie? Why can't Sam eat?"

"What if you just shut the fuck up?" Billy asked Potter, glaring sharply at him. "Some of us don't want to hear a million questions first thing in the morning."

"Quiet, Billy," Regulus said warningly. "We already have one being treated by Doctor Morris, we don't need two."

Ah, so one of the new prisoners did attempt to leave. It was a pity it wasn't Potter, Draco had been sure he would be the first one to do something rash and foolish.

"Is that where Eddie is?" Potter asked Regulus quickly. "With Doctor Morris?"

"Stop, now," Taylor told Potter. "Eat. We still have a meeting to hold."

The others were nearly done already. They all ate quickly, well aware of the penalty if they dallied. Draco's half of a meal went down even quicker than usual and he was grateful when Billy passed him an extra sausage under the table.

Potter and Bucky ate quickly as well, though Draco was momentarily amused by Potter's red face when they were forced to eat off the table like animals. It was another degradation made to break him. They all stacked up until there were times when Draco was sure he was so broken that he never expected to feel like himself again.

"There are two baskets of vegetables that need canned today," Weasley said, starting their meeting off the second that the clock read eight. "Taylor?"

"Understood," Taylor said. "I have a horse that needs shoed today. Regulus?"

"Understood," Regulus said in his usual short manner. It reminded Draco of his mother and always brought a small bit of comfort. "I have no needs. Trent?"

"The attic needs dusted," Trent said as he traced his finger on the table. "That's all."

Potter listened to their meeting silently, but Draco saw his questions and knew that he wouldn't be able to hold his tongue long.

"I don't get it," Potter said. "What's going on? Malfoy? How'd you get here? Are we all supposed to do these chores every day? Trent?"

Gods, he was irritating though.

Draco looked Potter over carefully while his assigned buddy, Trent, briefly explained the chores and the purpose of the morning meetings. It had been years since Draco saw Potter, but he looked unwell. There were heavy bags under his eyes, a fine tremor in his hands, something heavy weighing him down and curling his shoulders in. Potter wasn’t the same golden boy that Draco once knew, that was obvious.

Potter had scars as well - fine silver scars that stacked up on his forearms like a ladder. Draco couldn't imagine what would cause scars like those and so he had to assume Potter caused them himself.

So Saint Potter was in need of having his soul saved, it was interesting. It was also a shame that he wouldn't be saved on the ranch, only bent until he broke.