Chapter 28 Draco
Chapter 28 Draco
Draco arrived at Malfoy Manor in a truly miserable state, he couldn’t walk properly, he could barely stand. Lucius delivered him to his bedroom, depositing him on his bed in a heap. A look of disgust on his face.
‘You didn’t eat?’ Lucius paused in the doorway as he went to leave.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ Lucius seemed genuinely curious.
‘What’s the point?’ Draco attempted a shrug.
‘I didn’t think you would do that. I should have checked on you. I didn’t think you were that stupid… clearly I was wrong.’
‘Sorry to disappoint.’ Draco replied.
Lucius gave Draco a look that he couldn’t quite place, confusion perhaps, like he was trying to work out a particularly hard maths problem.
‘Sort yourself out.’ Was all he said in the end. An order not a request.
Despite Draco’s initial reaction to ignore anything his father said, he knew that he did in fact need to sort himself out, he was a mess in every way it was possible to be a mess.
Lucius summoned Vinny to Draco’s bedroom. Predictably Vinny looked horror struck when he saw the state of Draco and immediately started a bath and delivered a cornucopia of food.
Draco thanked him but dismissed him swiftly. He loved Vinny but he needed to be alone, to think and sort out the shattered fragments left of his sanity.
Draco felt better knowing that Dudley was close to him. So close now he could actually feel some of the weight leave his chest at the thought, he wanted to run down there now and gather Dudley up in his arms, kiss him, apologise a thousand times, the idea was so overwhelming that Draco managed to get himself to stand unaided. He used his dresser to help him move towards the en suite. He would shower first, he couldn’t hug Dudley with a weeks worth of filth coating him. He certainly couldn’t kiss Dudley without at least brushing his teeth thoroughly.
Draco had a large arched mirror in his bathroom, engraved with entwining snakes, Vinny kept it meticulously clean and polished. As he entered his reflection appeared in the mirror before him and his breath instantly caught in his throat. Draco had never seen a person look so wretched in his life. His hair was filthy, dried blood crusted several patches. His face was ghostly, gaunt and hollow he looked more like a corpse than a person, eyes protruding and cheekbones jutting out sharply. His skin was grey and bruised. He had deep lacerations on his right cheek and his neck, he had no recollection of how they had been made. Draco gingerly took off his bloody clothes, careful not to disturb his left hand side which was hurting considerably. Under his left rib was yellowing with a bruise. Both knees were also bruised and cut, as were his feet, several toes probably broken from his relentless kicking of the door.
Draco clumsily managed to tip himself into the bathtub landing was an undignified splash.
He laid in the bath until the water was cold. The grime left his skin and the water soaked away some the horrors of the past week. Draco had never felt this broken, something had snapped in him in that room and he didn’t know if it was something he’d be able to fix. He didn’t trust himself, there were large sections of time he could not recall at all, the walls had played tricks on him, he’d heard sounds that he wasn’t sure were real or not. He couldn’t tell if he was okay, he felt like some of his sanity was returning but did mad people ever think that they were mad? The walls of the bathroom weren’t moving so that was a start. He decided he might have some form of PTSD but there wasn’t much he could do about it, maybe one day if he made it through he could go to St Mungo’s and ask for some help, but that was not an option right now. Instead Draco resolved to form a plan. The priority was to save Dudley, to do this Voldemort must die, to do that the horcrux must be destroyed, to do that Draco would need to know how to destroy one, to find out he needed to get back into the Greengrass library. Draco wanted desperately to run straight to Dudley but he needed a plan to take with him and he needed a few days to get himself together first, he wouldn’t let Dudley see him this much of a mess, he glanced to his stump and his stomach dropped, there was nothing he could do about that one, he just had to hope that Dudley could see past it.
Surprisingly he slept well that night, he hadn’t slept properly for more than a week and was utterly exhausted. When he woke he ate some of the large breakfast brought by Vinny but promptly threw most of it back up and into the toilet, ungracefully he dressed himself. Draco struggled down the stairs but luckily his father had a large collection of canes on display in the reception hall, Draco plucked one from the wall. He found Voldemort surrounded by his cronies in the dining hall as usual. He looked about as rough as Draco did, his skin flaky, like old parchment. He was sat with a stoop and his breathing sounded laboured.
‘Draco.’ Voldemort acknowledged his presence.
‘My lord.’ He bowed.
Draco waited, he realised he was waiting for an apology, for some recognition of his sacrifice, for the week he spent imprisoned. Voldemort said nothing.
Anger threatened to bubble out of him, he wanted to run across the table and rip Voldemorts head off with his bare hands. Instead he pushed his fury away, tried to clear his thoughts. Even if he did rip Voldemorts head off it wouldn’t make any difference.
‘My lord, before we left last week I expressed that I was getting close to unblocking the barrier inside the mind of the muggle.’
‘Yes?’ Voldemort looked slightly more interested in him now.
‘I’d like to return to the Greengrass library to double check some incantations if that’s okay?’
‘Take the floo, you look too weak to portkey, Dolohov warn the Greengrasses that Draco will be arriving shortly.’
Dolohov strode out the room and Draco bowed again with great difficulty.
‘Thankyou my lord’
And he left.
That morning he took the floo to the Greengrass house pointedly ignoring the widening of Malcom Greengrass’s eyes as he took in his frail and handless form.
Draco locked the library door and moved as quickly as he could in the direction of ‘secrets of the darkest art’
It was in the same place, still looking equal parts ominous and inviting with its thick leather and gemstone cover. Draco flicked through the pages until he found the right section, eyes frantically searching for the paragraph that would give him the answers he needed so desperately, his heart was hammering and getting quicker and quicker each second he read, he was so filled with adrenaline that he had to stop reading when he realised with frustration that he had not taken in the meaning of any of the words he had read. He took a deep breath and tried to slow down. It still took Draco fifteen minutes to find what he was looking for. One sentence tucked away in a footnote.
‘It is thought that horcruxes are largely infallible however Herpo the foul is reported to have destroyed his own horcrux with the venom of a basilisk.’
That was it! A rush of excitement flooded through Draco, there was a way to destroy a horcrux. He tried to talk himself down, basilisk venom was incredibly rare and he had no way to source any but it was something. It was hope! Draco tucked the book into his robe pocket, it was far too large but with his new hobbling gait he was sure he could get it past Malcom without suspicion.