That Split Second | D.M

I returned home after getting my heart shattered to something far worse. The manor was overrun with death eaters, an entire floor dedicated to the boarding and housing of them. No need to call meetings or summon, not when you can simply whistle down the hall and give the signal.

Not even home would actually be home anymore. Mother received me with open arms and a tearful smile. We'd not had all of five minutes with one another before the reality of the new arrangements hit. Halls and corridor's would fill with insidious noises, doors slamming shut forcefully, in and out people I've never seen before would come and go like the doors were revolving. A dark curse cast over the building making it impossible to find, but neon marked for those who were on the wrong side of the coin.

It was truly headquarters now, and could not be debated on.

"Darling, some of your friends are staying here with us." I struck a look of confusion until she continued. "There are others now. Your age. And more than that, but some are of your age. Draco I tried to put a stop to it but I couldn't, I really tried. But this is just how it is now."

Mother was exhausted, just as terrified but hopeless. And I know that as she fussed over me, trying to offer a hug and forever pushing my hair the right way that it was just something to distract from the twisted things she's bared witness to already. Knowing that it's just a matter of time for me now, that date is nearing, preparation has begun. Extinction was just around the corner. Father approached, looking just as relieved but also just as worn out. No time for pleasantries. 

"When were you going to tell me about Zabini, father? Did it not even cross your mind to let me know that my best mate had been initiated too?"

 "It happened whilst I was locked up, Draco. There wasn't anything I could do."

"No," I sighed. Disappointment evident in my gait. "There never is, is there dad? Never fucking anything that can be done that doesn't serve the best interests of people that only see us as collateral. All we are now are plot devices to people who love to take."

"What's the matter, Draco? It seems like something else is bothering you. You don't ever talk like that, or use bad language?" Two parents. Loving, willing to bend to ensure that I didn't snap. Not at all how people perceive them to be, not cold or distant, good parents. Good parents that keep fucking letting me down. "Doesn't matter, it's nothing that can be changed. So I assume Zabini's here somewhere?"

Funnily enough, he'd asked to come and stay at the manor. Now he's here through force. "And Crabbe, Goyle?"

Why they dropped their heads in shame was beyond me, but I think somehow, I already knew. "No sweet boy, not Goyle." She said. "I'm so sorry sweetheart. He passed away a few days ago. He was comfortable and with his parents. The burns were too extreme and too painful, his body never recovered."

My lungs tightened, the room tilted and the walls begun to close in on me. Another death, a death that could have been prevented, another person that I took for granted my entire life. Dead. There's too much death. 

"I'm going to my room," I stated blankly. "Please don't follow me."

Everything was a blur, the entire journey through the floors that were now crowded with people coming and going left an odour. Like molten steel, it bit at my senses even as I navigated my way through on memory alone, barely blinking as I wove and strayed past every elf that stopped to bow. It was as though we'd opened up a hotel for criminals, Azkaban just wasn't cutting it anymore.

My hands shook with rage, a cold sweat forming across my face. I felt like a wasp stuck in a glass, or a rat backed in to a cage. I felt gargantuan anger, coupled with the pain of relentless loss, and the person who just so happened to get in my way took the brunt of it all.

"Watch where you're going!" The guy dared to order at me, in my home. He was burly in stature, knuckles full of scars and two missing teeth at the top left when he snarled. 

"What did you just say to me?" I asked, twisting my posture to meet his. The bubbling in my gut roared, demanding something that I had deprived it of for far too long now. Vengeance. "I said watch where the hell you're going you little git."

The laugh that escaped me disturbed him, and rightly so. A flare of my wand by a precise reflex shot a hex, hitting his lips as it exploded into a painful electrical spark and silenced him; it turned the skin around them a blistering red and sent him staggering in an attempt to rub it away with his sleeve. 

Talk shit now, I beg you.  

By the time he had peered up from his crouch, my knee was now where the hex had been. Those odd teeth smothered in blood instantly from the burst lips I had just deformed. On the floor and on his back he tried to draw a wand but found himself yelping as my foot threw down heavily across his wrist. 

I was sure I heard a bone crunch. 

The further into the carpet that I pressed his knuckles, leaning more and more weight on it, the more desperately he tried to tug on my ankle as he squealed like a little pig. I was enjoying it, every single second, squeal little piggy.

I then took that same foot, and drove it swiftly into his chin, and then his chest, and then his stomach. Over and over and over I beat at him, more frenzied than I had been with Higgs. Something was crawling up from deep inside me and I was powerless to hold it back. 

I'd snapped.

"Draco!" Someone called, it sounded lightyears away, but its tone was delicately female. "Draco, stop it! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Astoria charged me, tugging me away from whoever I'd just kicked the living daylights out of. And they heaved on the floor, rolling and searching for a grip of their wand again with a very clearly broken wrist. I wanted to return, continue hitting and maiming him until blood pooled beneath the soles of my shoes. 

I wanted to torture every last bit of y/n's voice out of my head and every last touch of hers off from my skin.

"You wait until I tell the homeowner what kind of animals he's housing!!" At that point even Greengrass glanced down at him with deflated sarcasm. "Yeah, you do that. Just don't forget to mention the part where you brazenly bad mouthed his son, hm? Yeah, that's right you festering pustule of a human being. I am the fucking homeowner."

Too late to repent, just seeing that split second of realisation in his eye as his face dropped wound me feral again like a dog with rabies. Clambering over his body he simply cowered behind his braced arms, he would not cast out at me. Not now that he knows who I am, maybe he would if there had been an audience with the Dark Lord. 

They're always much braver when they know they've got back up.

My knuckles ached beneath the weight of my rings as I laid into him again, leaving Astoria screaming bloody murder behind me in fright. The adrenaline felt too good, too enigmatic. I couldn't leave it alone, I needed more. One punch from the left, sending bloody spit up against a skirting board, then another from the right, producing the same effect. 

"I should shove a corkscrew through your chin and pin your tongue to the roof of your mouth, you shit talking scruff bag. I cannot wait for you to run to your little buddies, or even the Dark Lord at this point. You know how much he loves blood sports and I'm fairly certain he'd allow me to mutilate you just for some light evening entertainment... In the meantime, you see me? Turn and walk the other way. Because you know nothing of this property, yet I know every square inch like the back of my hand. So I will not hesitate to burn you in your sleep. Know what I mean?"

The pathetic mule was fighting so hard to not show that he was frightened. I already knew that I looked unhinged, probably nothing like myself but somebody totally different. 

Somebody dangerous.

"Failing that, I'll stalk, terrorise and play mind games you've never even heard of. And nobody will believe you, not one person. And you'll wind up in St. Mungo's indefinitely, licking the walls and sitting in your own messy diaper; pumped so full of narcotics you can barely pick your head up off the floor. And the only people in the world that will know that your stories are true and you're not just going insane will be me, and you. I absolutely won't tell them any different. He's a madman sir, just lost it one day, this is the best place for him. And just like that, you'll never be seen nor heard from again. Forgotten by society so easily."

Eventually the psychotic drive simmered down enough that I could peel my body away from his. He grunted and grumbled, rolling to his side and waiting until it was safe to get back up. Blood splatters dotted my skin, a mixture of both his and mine drying out as the burn of split knuckles ignited on both hands. I thought all too well about dragging him to the top of some stairs and kicking him down them, but the sound of someone clearing their throat above me had my attention waning.

When my eyes rolled up, I saw him, at least thirty feet down the long winding hall. Zabini stood aside from the room he'd been allocated. Clearly Blaise had just witnessed the event, not the first time he had seen me fight but definitely the first time he'd had to watch me hitting someone who I already knew damn well wouldn't retaliate. 

A coward's prerogative. And he just shook his head in disgust at me, not a single word bouncing from his lips as he back footed into his room and softly locked the door; not wanting to dwell on the sight of me feral and broken.

I didn't mean for him to see that, or for anyone to see that. Only reminded that Greengrass was here at all when she began tugging me away whimpering and pleading for peace as I'd managed to terrify her too. "For fuck sake Astoria! Get the fuck away from me how many times do I have to tell you!" I shouted angrily, shoving her aside without caution. "I know you've been following me," I snapped, watching as she turned wide-eyed and lost on words to even try and lie. "You obsessive little troll. I don't hit women but if I did, I'd pull your fucking eyes out of your face."

"That's not what it was like, Malfoy. What's gotten into you? You're not like this.. you're not violent, but there's a malignant glint in your eye and I don't like it."

"I don't want to hear it Greengrass." I dropped my voice low and menacing, because I really need her to get the fucking point. "Whatever strings you pulled to be allowed here were a waste of your time."

"I was just scared, that's the only reason I went looking for you." Tears quelled on her lash line as she flinched every time I took in a laboured breath and gestured. "Scared for what, Tori? That I might miraculously fall in love with you all of a sudden and you wouldn't be there to witness it?"

The more seconds that passed the more upset Astoria became, throwing me into doubt, little by little. "Tori... why are you here?" I asked again, slowly and seriously. 

"The exact same reason you are," she whispered, turning out her wrists. "I found what I thought was a bewitched scroll of Runes in my parents old cellar, the day after the party. But it was a portkey and I didn't know, but by the time I'd figured it out, I was a hostage, until they gave me this mark. But they said if I told anyone now or tried to run away that people would just kill me anyway, and then they threatened to take Daph."

She's not even sixteen yet, almost but not actually. In most ways she is literally still a child, hence my severe disinterest for her. Now she's a soldier? Nothing but some sort of scullery maid to the nastier people in higher ranks. Yet another person close to me that the dark army had snatched. 

It's never going to end. 

"Look, I'm sorry. I need to just get the hell away from here and from... that," I motioned to the guy now holding his face and sat upright. "I'm sorry I shouted at you but I can't do this right now. You need to leave me alone."

"Please," she begged again, catching my wrist. I shrugged her off, pinning her arm up the wall with way more force than was necessary. "Back off! I can't help you, I can't even help myself!!"

Astoria cried some more as I waded on my way again, continuing the journey that had been caught short on accounts of needing to beat some idiot up. Yet it did not quench the thirst for blood and pain for some reason. I was hurting so badly on the inside, I wanted the outside to match it too. Visceral pain, it settles deep in your coccyx and wraps around your spine.

I left her there, shell shocked as she slid down the wall and onto her knees. I didn't turn back, I didn't think any coherent thoughts at all. I saw, felt and heard nothing, and before I knew it I was stood in the middle of my room; and I didn't know how long I'd been there when I became fully cognisant of the fact. 

When I gained enough mental clarity to do anything but stare at the full length mirror at myself, the rucksack came open in my hands. After desperately rifling through I found the vial of morphine, and this time I did not dose it out or care to monitor, I threw my head back and sunk the lot. The shirt peeled from my torso like vinyl wrap, I could only wish that it would tear my skin off with it. And with father's whiskey stashed under the bed, plenty enough left over since Pans had pulled me from my wallowing; I sank that down too.

More time passed, but how much I couldn't tell you, seconds, hours maybe? My bedroom was cold and barren, unlived in and pristinely neat. Not like y/n's. Fine fabrics and ebony woodwork, grandiose furnishings fit for a king and yet, I hated it. 

I hated it. I hate it.

Whatever I could lay my eyes on received a destructive curse. Glasses smashed, frames tumbled from the walls and linen shredded all around, a photograph of Goyle and I the summer before we started Hogwarts. Our families chatting away in the garden whilst we just ran free, behaving mischievously as boys do. Then a hefty portion of goose feathers twinkling through the air, pulled from the pillowcases meant for sleeping on. They were everywhere the first morning I woke up to her too, but there's no beauty in destruction anymore. 

Striding close up to the mirror, pretty much nose to nose with my reflection, I saw myself speaking back, laughing, taunting. 

My reflection knew what I was, it's what I cannot hide from. Messy thoughts that lurk in murky waters. Muddy and infected with a bloodborne virus, generational and there's no cure. 

Darkness grows where nothing else can. Parasitical. 

Hollow.

Finally, the inevitable had happened. I'd lost my fucking mind. The last straw, plucked and shredded.

The tightrope had frayed too much and now it's too thin to balance on. It's a long drop to the bottom, and nobody will be there to pick up my shattered bones.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it. I hate her. I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her.I hate her. 

I hate everything.

I hate myself.

How much more hating can one do, before it consumes them whole?