When Draco Met Willie

When Draco Met Willie

Draco Malfoy had precious little left to smirk about. He was no longer rich. He was no longer well dressed. He wasn't urbane, or even pseudo-sophisticated. He was what he was. Tired, hungry, dirty, wet, cold, and on the dodge.

He had made his enemies of course, as a Slytherin you were expected to make enemies. But he had maybe made too many. Too many enemies accumulated in the pathetic handful of years since leaving home to strut upon the stage that was Hogwarts. We all make our share of friends and enemies in the world. (Anyone who denies that needs to be checked for a misplaced brain. Or, perchance, a well placed memory charm.) There is little we can do to avoid giving offense to someone, somewhere and especially in the teenaged "awkward" years. But Draco was now in the unenviable position of having pissed off practically everybody on the winning side of the war which had just recently concluded.

He probably should now have had some empathy for those fugitive Nazis who had followed Grindelwald's pet dictator to the last. They found themselves in similar situations. Only he didn't know any muggle history. He didn't know, or care, that Grindelwald's defeat had anything to do with the Gotterdamerung collapse of Germany at the end of the Second Great Muggle War. He would not have felt any comfort in knowing that others had been where he ran, or rather slithered, for his life.

Each few minutes of sleep was snatched with the fear of waking up to a wand tip lightly touching the soft spot behind his ear, as some hated voice whispered into that ear the curse by which he would die. Every rest was with the stress of feeling that his pursuers were gaining ground as he panted for breath and tried to overcome the stitch in his side.

Behind him in the bushes of the forest a soft rustling of leaves, as some animal passed through, made him tense even more than he already was. He had been hunted in so many ways, and now he was sure he was being tracked by at least one unregistered animagus hunter. Not that anyone was going be punished for killing him, not with the Mark of the Dark Looser inside his left forearm.

Draco reflected, too late to do him any possible good, that he should have found an earlier cure for his tendency to run off at the mouth. His last remarks to Longbottom, about the parents whom Neville had never really known, had perhaps put him a little too far up on "the Longbottom List" to escape, no matter how many months it took to hunt him down. Who knew that the seemingly feckless goofball would turn into an inexorable hunter-killer?

The snuffling of a large animal scenting the night breeze, which unfortunately blew in that direction, told Draco it was time to run again. Perhaps for the last time. With no conception that he was following the most famous stage directions in the world, Draco carried them out to perfection. "Exit, pursued by bear."