Celestial Being

That other time had been worse in every way.

Everyone had been frantic. Servants left work undone, guards marched through the castle without so much as seeing Draco stumble to get out of their way, uncertain where to go. His mother had dragged him from the castle before daybreak in only their sleep clothes. She’d never been like that before. Never afraid. They’d brought nothing with them in the carriage as they fled.

Draco thought they must be safe at the manor. First, his mother put him in the great hall where servants also gathered. Draco had never been left with lowly servants before. He thought it must be a mistake, surely he wasn’t meant to be there with the lower class. His mother disappeared for hours without a trace. There were only small cries of terrified women and children, and then, finally, the sounds of battle.

Malfoy Manor was a stronghold, which only meant the battle sounds lasted quite a long time before the enemy broke through. They knew when it happened, because of the shrieking. The tenor changed. It got closer.

Soldiers burst into the hall and no one thought to check what emblem they wore. Everyone just began screaming and scrambled away. Draco, foolish, youthful Draco, did not scramble. He’d been sat in his father’s chair at the end of the hall as if he was Lord of the Manor already. All day Draco told himself he was just sitting in his father’s stead, until his father came back. When the soldiers came he rose up as he knew his father would and stood his ground. This was the ancient and noble house of Malfoy and Draco would live up to his name. They’d dressed Draco in the only armor he had. Ceremonial stuff. Flashy instead of battle ready. He tried to wear it well, as his father would want. Malfoys did not fall. He would be brave, until the end.

He was not brave in the end. These soldiers were his, and with them was his mother. What a boon, to be able to collapse into her arms when she ran for her son. Narcissa kissed at Draco’s forehead, clinging to him. Then she shoved him down a corridor and told him to run. Go further into the heart of the keep. Do not let anyone find him. Permission was all Draco needed to act cowardly and flee.

The certainty in his mother’s eyes was plain as day. If the enemy caught Draco, they would kill him.

In Draco’s dreams, it was still happening. This isn’t a battlefield, it’s a bedroom. In fact, it’s a bathing room shooting off from a bed chamber. Draco clings to the old sword from the mantle piece he’d pulled down in a panic. The embers in the hearth beneath its display are still burning, having been lit by the servants that morning, before the invasion was real.

Draco doesn’t dare look away from the door to the bathing room. The sound of battle is not distant enough. It sounds like the manor might be wrenched apart under his feet and he’d join everyone else crying out as he was dragged to hell. He never catches sight of what he looked like, not in any of the decadent mirrors his parents had staged in that room. Draco never has the chance to see his own terror.

The monster that bursts through the door does so with a wave of broken splinters. Pathetically, Draco screams. He raises one hand to protect his face from the scratches, and lashes out wildly with the sword. The monster bats his attack away with a gauntlet.

Draco is caught in this moment. His mind fixates on how his weak attempts to save himself are batted aside. Every time.

Then the monster kicks Draco hard enough he catches air. Draco lands hard and there is no air. Draco is trying to scream and no sound comes out. He writhes on the floor, trying to crawl away from the monster wearing dented steel, a raging snarl, and green-fire eyes that promised death.

If he’d just thrust down his sword into Draco the boy would be dead, but this monster does not wish to deliver swift death. He slashes out. Decorative or not, the armor saves Draco’s life when it blocks the sword from rending Draco’s chest open. The madman swings harder and the sword breaks through the expensive, deferential metal.

Draco is trapped again at that moment. He can’t forget how fire bursts across his stomach. He remembers what that monster looks like at the scent of blood. He’s mad for it. He lashes out again, and again, until Draco finds his breath again in time to scream.

There is no mercy in that monster. It’s not mercy, when the monster leaves Draco in that room. Draco is left for slow, agonizing death, and only the monster’s desire to cause pain saves him.

The invader had wanted all of his victims to hurt before they died. So the cuts were shallow. Shallow enough that they didn’t pierce anything vital and luck granted Draco the chance to heal. And fate gave him ugly, jagged scars so he’d never forget he wasn’t meant to.

The war doctors let him feel the pain. Maybe they wish he’d die from the shock of it. Maybe they welcome how Draco bleeds through the bandages and cries out for his mother, who doesn’t come.

Draco knows this is history. He knows how it ends. It had been days before they realized who Draco was. Days of constant agony and terror. Days before they begrudgingly decided he needed to live. They didn’t care how painful living was. The more painful, the better. Draco still feels the pain.

It’s hard to separate then from now, memory for the present. It’s in him again. He’s once again on fire. It’s deeper this time. Like the monster that slashed him came back with more hunger and would eat him up from the inside out. Draco feels his blood burning. He wonders if it always burned like this. He wonders if he opened his eyes, would he see that green-eyed rage blaze under his skin, following his veins and arteries through his body until his blood was only poison?

They’d given him something. It felt like being under water. His head swam and he could never come up for air. At times, he was almost cogent enough to recognize foggy shapes. People, maybe. There were brief points of pressure. Perhaps touch. Then, the pain might come through like blazing agony, and he would choke for real on something else. Some fluid in his mouth. Something to dull his mind completely. To leden his limbs so he didn’t thrash and tear through fragile organs they’d just tried so hard to heal. Send him fully into blackness. Whatever that was, the vile taste in his mouth, it swamped his mind in too much darkness for dreaming.

Draco didn’t wake up. That wasn’t what the foggy awareness was. Maybe he just returned to existence. He pops in and out, over and over, and this time he was in. His body was a real, heavy thing. Uncertain if it connected to his mind. Must have, a bit, because Draco knew his mouth was dry and hairy. His arms and chest were strapped down. He was a prisoner to his bed, a prisoner to the blank ink that overtook him.

Sometimes when he existed he could open his eyes and see shapes. Sometimes he could move his mouth and try for words. It wasn’t so different from that other time. He still calls out for his mother, and she can’t hear him. The fuzz in his mouth wasn’t capable of words.

Existence terrified Draco. He didn’t want to know he was real and not be able to feel or move. He didn’t want the only thing he felt to be dragged down into dreaming. He didn’t want to ache from cuts that would never heal. He did not want to be frozen, unable to wake up from this nightmare to scream.

It is so dark. Draco wonders if he is finally dead. He wonders if he’s being dragged down to hell at long last. He wonders in hell is unending pain. The fiery tear of organs pulled out from beneath his skin.

Draco doesn’t believe he’s awake. His limbs are still buried in warm water and it’s impossible to move. He barely opens his eyes. Only if he leaves them closed he still sees light, unless dark shadows pass by to steal it. Draco forces heavy eyelids open.

Some figure is there above him. Too blurry to identify. Something tall and silver blonde. Draco wonders if it’s his father, together with him at last now that he found hell. He is afraid Lucius has found him. He can’t shake the thought that Lucius’ love didn’t carry to the afterlife, only his hate. Maybe Lucius could have escaped his own death, if he’d not wasted his life on saving his ungrateful child.

Draco opens his mouth and it is desert dry. His tongue is leather. He struggles but can’t make words. He grunts to his father, begging. He opens his mouth and croaks out a howl.

Then the pain comes back, and his father leans over Draco and makes him sleep.

Next time Draco sees his father he is still parched, but words somehow tumble out. He begs Lucius to forgive him. He begs his father to make King Voldermort stop the war. He tells his father they were wrong. The war was wrong. The people they were fighting were his friends, and they loved Draco, and please, god, it hurt, make it stop hurting.

It was somehow worse to learn the figure was not his father. If Draco’s brain was less fuzzy he might have been able to identify why. There was no logical reason to regret he wasn’t dragged into hell to be tormented by a ghost. Yet, here he was. Robbed of his chance at absolution.

That tall, imposing man had been real, though. It was Cousin Xeno. He stood over Draco from time to time as the young man regained consciousness. Gradually, he worked Draco back from the brink of nonexistence. Always gentle, always calm. Gradually, he helped Draco sip at fluids when he awoke. Never enough to quench his thirst. Gradually, he tested part of Draco’s body to make sure it still existed. When Xeno told Draco he was touching something, Draco remembered it was real.

When Xeno told Draco his mother held his hand, Draco remembered he could turn his head, and another blurry figure was there. His mother squeezed his hand and he would have cried if his eyes weren’t so dry.

His mouth had been made real and he could slur out words. Could she hear him? Had she heard him calling to his father?

Draco begged Xeno not to give him the medication. He squeezed his mother’s hand and begged. His mother leaned over him and said sweet encouragement. Called Draco her sweet boy. Told him he was strong. Draco wished he had tears in him. He squeezed her hand hard as he could because she was real. She was there!

And then he squeezed his mother’s hand because the warm water receded and the pain came back. The agony. Draco tried to be brave and take it. Every ounce of pain brought him closer to reality. It was the price for existence. Without existing there was no hand in his. No soft words from his mother.

When the pain got so bad Draco started thrashing Xeno had to give him the medication. Draco hated it. It felt like sinking. It felt like dying. Then the world went black, and he had no feelings left.