Ghost Story

Light spilled in from the row of windows, illuminating the grey, bare little room. Prisoners weren't allowed to decorate their cells: a certain aura of sterility, impersonality was intended (if never openly admitted to be so) to wear down each prisoner's own sense of self, reducing them to banal greyness like the room they would occupy for the duration of their sentence.

The more grievous the crime, the harsher the facility and the less individuality the prisoner was allowed to express. This particular cell contained nothing but grey walls, grey floor, grey ceiling. A small bed crafted out of the same grey, clay-like substance and covered over in grey sheets. Facing the bed a small table emerged almost organically from the floor, with solid grey chairs on either side. It was out of courtesy, supposedly, but all it typically did was remind the prisoners that no-one was ever willing to visit them.

There was a mirror and a sink in one corner, and the windows let light in. All in all, it was a rather sad little room, completely devoid of character, but then its occupant had been convicted of crimes against humanity in the recent war, and sentenced to life in prison.

Draco Malfoy stood by the left window, gazing out at a world he would never see again. The waves crashed against the cliffs below, and his sole company was the hoarse cries of the gulls that soared in the sky. After the debacle concerning Azkaban, the Ministry had built its new maximum security prison on the Cornish shore at Tintagel, jutting out on an isthmus, a place steeped in protective and defensive magic from old times. Aurors patrolled the corridors now, and if he even stuck his hand out the window, the wards covering the space would probably cut it off.

He thought about it the first day of his incarceration, in the forlorn hope he'd subsequently bleed to death and escape that way. One of his jailers had given him a lecture after bringing him his dinner and watching Draco eat, wand trained on his every movement to make sure he didn't palm the cutlery or use them as a weapon. The jailer - Draco never bothered to remember their names, they were all the same, traitors to wizarding kind - had told Draco that the wards cauterised any wound immediately, so he'd just end up limbless if he tried anything. Sadly, the windows were too small to stick his head through.

It was a boring, mind-numbing routine. Prisoners were woken at seven-thirty a.m., fed, given time in the library to read and study for a three hour block in the morning, followed by an hour's compulsory physical activity, lunch, another two hours of optional classes, as opposed to private reading or study (Draco had taken Arithmancy and Old Welsh, for no other reason than it suited his perverse mood), two hours of free time, another hour of physical labour (typically preparing dinner or doing the laundry or any of the myriad grating chores that a prison required to be done), dinner, another hour of chores, and free time until curfew at nine-thirty p.m.

The prisoners formed little cliques and groups in order to maintain some kind of humanity and keep insanity at bay, associations that would be akin to friendship if they actually trusted one another. However, wherever Draco walked, whether it be to the laundry, or the library, or the kitchen, he was met with trailing glances, muttered whispers and the occasional snigger. The other prisoners avoided him if possible, refused to talk to him, and claimed very loudly that the seat was 'taken' if he tried to sit with them during meals.

In some ways that suited Draco fine. He preferred his company at any rate to that of some two bit thugs with no political vision, and he considered even the other former Death Eaters to be below him. He would have wished, however, that the reluctance to share his company was out of some kind of fear or respect due his crimes and former authority.

It was not. When new prisoners were incarcerated, they would almost certainly be informed by their fellows of Draco's particular situation, pointing him out to the newcomer, who would predictably snort and watch wide eyed as Draco excused himself and left the room if he could. Within the next few days, they would usually attempt to contact him, typically nervous and hesitant if they asked it was true. Draco would fix them with a stare, coldly assure them it was not true, and go on his way. His gaunt appearance and pallid skin gave a sort of intense conviction to his words which only heightened the distance between him and his fellow prisoners. In comparison, Draco looked insubstantial, only half there, like a shade. Or a ghost.

Even his jailers treated him with a condescension as a result of his trial, and the damning gossip that arose, teasing him over his meals, when they knew he couldn't strike back. Or rather, they had known. After constant jibes from one particular guard, Draco had leapt at him over dinner and throttled him half dead before he could be pulled off. There was no chance for him to escape, of course. He knew that just as well as they did. He'd assaulted the guard merely because he couldn't stand the taunting, and after a month in solitary confinement with bare rations, Draco was released back into the general prison community.

The taunting was a lot less after that.

In all, his reputation derived from the trial he'd suffered under as a result of the Ministry. Once the prosecution had wheeled out half the country it seemed as witnesses to his barbaric and inhuman acts of cruelty, and judgement had been passed (Draco being found guilty), the Ministry put as their final witness a criminal Legilimentor on the stand, who had talked to many of Draco's associates, both from school days and while serving under the Dark Lord, read his papers and spoken to Draco once. This, they hoped, might guide the court better when considering an appropriate punishment. In a clear, concise manner, she rattled through a brief précis of Draco's life, reducing the years to one irrevocable fact: it revolved around one Harry Potter.

As a student, so the Legilimentor posited, Draco had asked for Harry's friendship, and when it had been spurned, every single act that Draco had undertaken since was an attempt to prove himself against and to Harry as a worthy adversary, someone deserving of his attention whom it was a mistke to ignore for so long. The Legilimentor continued that even in the Death Eaters, Draco's obsession with the Boy Who Lived was often remarked on, as something regarded with equal parts caution, awe and humour. Draco frequently requested assignments that would allow him to take Harry head on, that would cause pain to (if not kill) his close friends and associates. Draco was fully aware many of these missions were morally wrong, but he would justify anything if he got him even with Potter. What the Legilimentor argued was that above everything, Draco desired Harry to finally acknowledge him.

There was a general mutter of consternation that ran around the courtroom, and the prosecution asked one final question: "What was all this in aid of?"

The Legilimentor took her time, nibbling on her lower lip before responding. "I think that, in the end, Draco Malfoy was irrevocably and madly in love with Harry Potter."

People laughed as Draco was dragged from the courtroom.

Five years went on, and Draco continued his humdrum little existence. He received no vistors, was sent no owls, and even the joke of his particular neuroses faded after a while. He refused to bond with any of the other prisoners even so, stubbornly turning away any and all overtures of friendship that were made to him.

And then one day, he was told he had a visitor. Draco shrugged at the news, turning back to the window. He didn't even need to look to know who it was.

"Five years. I knew you'd come by eventually. I know you couldn't resist."

"Is it true what they said?" Harry asked simply, and Draco paused in his thoughts to look at him, cold grey eyes unblinking.

"Yes," he said, and looked out at the sea again, and the soaring gulls. When he turned again to say something more, Harry was gone, and the words died in his mouth, leaving him unsure what he would he said in the first place, or if there was anything left to say.

Draco Malfoy never received another visit, not from Harry or anyone else. He lived the rest of his life out under the watchful eye of his jailers, his only solace the cry of the gulls, the crash of the waves, and his own imagination.