Acid Pop Junkies

Chapter - 09            Now Leaving Dracopolis

Drivin' faster in my car.

Falling farther from just what we are.

Smoke a cigarette and lie some more.

These conversations kill.

Falling faster in my car.

Too much walking, shoes worn thin.

Too much trippin and my souls worn thin.

Time to catch a ride it leaves today,

her name is what it means.

Too much walkin' shoes worn thin.

Stone Temple Pilots- Big Empty

    "It's not the car."

    Malia wound around the vehicle and stood wiping the dirt from her hands in front of Draco. Draco didn't move. He would never show it, but he was numb with apprehension. He had just be shoved into a situation he wasn't fit to deal with and now running away didn't even seem to be working. He kept imagining Potter coming down the now eerily dark cobblestone road with blame on his face and a curse on his lips. There was also the memory of that last guttural scream before everything went to pieces.

    "Wait... was there a scream?" Draco wondered. "Did he scream or did I... "

    The slamming of the car hood made Draco jump. Malia leaned cautiously on the car beside Draco, staring at him in both awe and confusion with her eyes alight. She stepped in front of these emotions however, and managed to put on a face that suggested a more serious situation was at hand.

    "I'm sorry Drac- "

    Draco halted her moment of confrontation.

    "Shut up you stupid girl!" he shouted passionately. Malia flinched at this sudden attack. "I'm the one who's sorry!" he bellowed. Malia's defenses shot up.

    "Why don't you go back and handle the situation instead of cowering here like some spineless wonder!"

    "Maybe you can't understand this right now, but I'm not looking for a short vacation where I can come back a week later and everything will be all right because I'm sorry," he spat forcefully. Malia swallowed deeply.

    "I'm not stupid," she insisted. "And I'm not going to sit here and be insulted by you just because you're afraid."

    Draco rested his palms on the boot and bent his head, not wanting to waste time with Malia's defiance when he could be escaping. He would have to risk going by broom. His mind made up, he pushed himself off the boot when to his surprise it flew open, revealing a huddled shape that seemed to be all elbows and knees.

    "What the fuck?" Draco breathed. Malia was still leaning against the car inspecting her nails.

    "Have a little class will you?!" she shot at him. Draco turned back to the pointy creature.

    "Quoi le fuck?" he repeated.

    Malia began to gain interest in what Draco was so agitated by. Finally a head emerged from the filthy little space.

    Pollocks Rocket blinked and smiled stupidly, with a wad of old gum stuck in his hair. Draco narrowed his eyes at him as Malia craned her neck and called,

    "What's in there?"

    Draco slammed the hood down and gave Malia a convincing smirk.

    "Just a little piece of crap that was bothering me."

    Seeing Draco's expression she ran to the back of the car and flung open the boot. Pollocks' face suddenly became very jovial.

    "Malia! I've come to h-help protect y-you on your trip. And not only that, I brought Exploding Snap!"

    Malia eyes went very wide for a moment, then she frowned sadly.

    "It's not a trip," she murmured with a tinge of panic in her voice. "Draco's in trouble and I think I could be, too. We're leaving."

    Draco had enough of waiting for Potter to come and plunge a knife in his back. He started at a brisk walk, but the moment he put one foot in front of the car's bumper, there was a crack and a flash and Draco was lying on his back. He scrambled to the side of the car looking around wildly for a levitating head or any other telltale signs of an enemy hidden beneath an invisibility cloak. Pollocks tiptoed over to Draco and began to whisper,

    "It was,-"

    "Why the fuck are you whispering?!" Draco snapped. Pollocks wrung his hands in anxiety.

    "I-I'm really sorry. I just wanted to tell you that Hermione Granger put a boundary charm on everyone. We can't leave unless the charm is taken off."

    Pollocks finished by taking a step back from Draco. The blond boy broke down to the lowest remainder. He slid to the ground with his knees bent and his face to the night's sky.

    "I knew a mudblood would end up killing me," he stated firmly. "Sweet, fucking karma."

    Draco was contemplating the possibility of using Pollocks as a human shield once Potter hurled the killing curse at him when he suddenly found the tip of someone's wand pointing right between his eyes. He was about to make a desperate grab for it when Pollocks blurted out,

    " Libertia!"

    Draco swore he actually felt a small weight being lifted off his shoulders. Pollocks stood there shaking slightly, waiting for Draco's judgment.

    "You undid the spell, didn't you?" Draco said in perfect monotone.

    Pollocks nodded and chanced a look at Malia. She was biting her lip. Draco continued.

    "And you really want to come along?"

    Pollocks nodded three times in quick succession. Draco stared briefly at the ground, then back at the stowaway.

    "Fine, bag'o wank, but if you piss me off just once with your choir boy shit, I'll drop you off even if we're flying over crap chasm."

    "Umm, Draco," Malia interjected. "Cars don't fly."

    Draco closed his eyes half out of exasperation and half out of exhaustion. His lids were dark purple, proof of the life he was loosing.

    "Get in the car, don't speak."

    Malia and Pollocks didn't need to be told twice. Malia lowered herself into the driver's seat and familiarized herself with the gears. Draco took one disgusted look at the big machine and slipped into the passenger's side. After a brief, embarrassing struggle with the door handle, Pollocks bounced onto the back seat with quiet glee. Malia inserted the key into the ignition with a grim look hiding her fear. After the engine had made several small rumbling sounds, it finally turned over and caused Malia to smile in relief. Draco didn't feel much like smiling himself, a sigh would suffice. The redhead now partly in control turned to Pollocks.

    "Put on your seat belt," she commanded the mouth-breathing sack of pure joy in the back seat. Pollocks nodded and started on his task in wide eyed exuberance. Malia strummed her fingers on the steering wheel nervously. Draco stared at her, hoping his prying eyes would pry the layer of stupidity loose from her brain and make her stop this delay. Finally Rocket's tinny little voice called to them.

    "I'm done! Is this right?" Malia looked back to see that he had somehow gotten two of the seat belts to crisscross over his chest as tightly as possible. He just smiled bashfully as the nylon straps squeezed the life from him.

    "Yeah, nice," Malia lied out of pity. She didn't want to think of Pollocks right now. It seemed almost wrong to think of something that meant so little to her while she was on the cusp of another great new reality. She was terrified at first, after all, one doesn't see a dead body every day, but Sirius had also meant very little to her. Maybe he didn't even die.

    She looked at Draco. He was lying back in the moldy car seat, looking very out of place. Out of place, but still as enticing as the situation at hand. He didn't think it was so wonderful, but the sheer excitement of it left Malia fumbling with the gears. She pressed her foot on the gas pedal hard and the car drove out of Hogsmeade with out any more difficulties. Malia took one last look at Draco before setting her gaze upon the road. He appeared to be sleeping with one hand in his coat.

                *    *    *    *    *    *

    Hermione lay down on her bed watching her own tears darken her pillow and choking out sobs. It was misery and she felt like it could go on forever. All the hope, the effort, the good intentions had gone to waste. Her idea for a perfect society would never be realized. And Draco Malfoy was responsible. He ran, leaving them with unanswered questions, leaving them to make their own conclusions. Hermione never thought a mere boy, even Draco Malfoy, could be capable of killing, but then how... He was a hateful, furious thing that hurt them more than he cared to know. She and Harry could not even look at each other after it happened. She hated him for that. She screwed up her face as another rush of tears started. Her thoughts became muddled and she wished nothing more than to fall asleep, but on a night like this, sleep would only come easily for few.

                *    *    *    *    *    *

    Dante sat with his ear to the door of the Gryffindor girls dormitory, playfully trying to catch a little gray spider that was scurrying around his feet. He had been eavesdropping on Granger for the past hour with mild interest. He didn't even know why he was listening, it's not as if he expected her to talk to herself. All he heard were snuffling and soft, wavering gasps of air. It was strange to hear Granger cry. He could never imagine her cry, but had wanted to hear that sound for one reason or another. She had seemed indestructible on her high, educated horse. But Dante suspected the winds of change must have been howling when Sirius Black stood at the top of those stairs, and they must have been screaming when he fell...

    He got up and dusted off his pants. The clock at the opposite side of the common room told him it was a quarter past three.

    "Oops! Looks like everyone's up past their bedtime. Might as well make the most of it."

    Feeling restless, he slid down the rail of the spiral staircase with ease. The common room had the dim glow of firelight, the only source of light available.

    "I think I'll take a stroll downstairs," Dante told himself. "...See what they left me."

    He chuckled at his idea of a joke and made his merry way out the portrait hole.

                *    *    *    *    *    *

    Dante realised too late that the Gryffindor tower was much higher up than his own common room and therefore had different routes to go to the same places. However, his happy mood didn't fade and he continued down staircase after staircase, humming the Hogwarts song to the tune of some random new song. As he reached the next landing, he fell silent in the middle of the chorus and looked around warily. After a tedious silence he yelled, "Ha!" and listened to the pleasant echo it made. This was where the whole spectacle was carried on. Even thought the staircase had moved several times since the event, Dante was able to recognize it by the bit of red chewing gum Malia had stuck on the banister.

    "Too bad for you there isn't any chewing gum in HELL!" Dante bellowed erratically. He then sighed again, expressing his pleasure in solitude.

    Suddenly he remembered why he was here. He crouched down near the edge of the first stair, or the last, depending on how you look at it, and surveyed the dusty, yellowed stone with his quick, precise eyes. He spotted the flaw almost immediately. It could not have been bigger than a knut, but it was unmistakable. There was a chip in the stair that Sirius had fallen from. As if to confirm his suspicions, a fine footprint showed that Sirius had in fact stepped on that crack.

    "And broke his back... " Dante muttered bemusedly. "Or his neck, or his head!"

    The boy snapped out of his reverie. Staring at the flaw for a moment he shook his head and thought,

    "Oh scum fuck! Nope. That won't do at all," he chuckled involuntarily.

    With that he pulled his wand from his robes, tapped the stair once and said,

    "Reparo!"

    The missing piece of stone flew back into place and melded itself with the stair so that it was indistinguishable from any other stair in the castle.

    "Sorry Draco old man, but I just want to keep things interesting... "

    Satisfied with his alteration, Dante started bounding down the stairs two at a time, until he reached the Great Hall.

                *    *    *    *    *    *

    At the same time Dante sprinted into the Great Hall, Draco woke violently from a bad dream.

    There was no other way to explain except to say childishly that he just had a bad dream. He was walking slowly through a graveyard much like the one behind his house where lots of his old relatives were buried. It was not an ugly sort of day, there was no rolling thunder or pouring rain. It was just a very quiet, very serene day. After a short walk he found himself looking over the edge of a freshly dug grave. He could not see anything in the grave except for dark, but this scared him so he looked up. The shiny, slate gray tombstone caught his attention. It read simply,

    "Sirius Black, Guilty until proven innocent."

    Draco was grateful that he had woken up before he could see what was really at the bottom of that grave. To be honest, something that Draco rarely was, even with himself, he had almost vomited out of pure panic.

    Now that he was far away from the castle he could breathe slightly longer breaths. He tried to remember exactly how this came to be.

    First, he had a fight with Sirius Black. They both got very angry- no, he got angry and Sirius said sorry. Then Black took a few steps back, not even looking where he was going and he fell down a really long way. There was a loud crack, so he probably broke open his skull. Potter saw this happen. Potter saw Draco at the top of the stairs.

    "And then I ran," Draco concluded. At this thought Draco frowned deeply. "I was driven out," he thought. "Potter wanted to kill me, so I had to leave. I had to leave because Potter was too thickheaded to realize the truth."

    This thought left Draco colder than ever. It felt like a defeat. A defeat by his worst enemy. He looked out the window for a distraction from his thoughts. The road was unfamiliar. The weak headlights did not reveal much of their surroundings, but he guessed they were still in rural country because of the thin dirt road they chased endlessly. He looked around the car.

    Rocket was in the back, either sleeping or collapsed, still strapped to the seat tightly with his head hanging down and his arms sticking out slightly, like a badly made action figure. His super power, the ability to look more pathetic than he sounds. This person reinforced Draco's belief that some beings just can't function in a normal society. The pressure was too much.

    Making fun of the hated wasn't distracting Draco's misery. He wanted to beat himself on the head, tear his heart out, blow out the ceiling, anything. Instead he settled for digging his fingernails into his palms until blood sprang from his hands and tears sprang from his eyes. His whole body was tense and constricted.

    "I didn't do a thing! Not one goddamn thing!" he thought indignantly. "Please, Lucifer, God, help me! I can't help myself and I can't help them."

    Now his thoughts were at a desperate scream. He suddenly thought of Malia. If she saw him like this, she might just turn around out of fear. As if she had read his thoughts, she touched his arm delicately.

    "Draco, are you sick?" Surprisingly she giggled. "It's okay, I got sick the first time I went driving too. Muggle transportation is so medieval."

    Thankfully she couldn't see him very well, otherwise she might not like what she saw. Draco dried his eyes so roughly he almost punched himself. He looked at her to make sure she wasn't looking at him. She was smiling in an unguarded way. She was sincerely happy about this. He didn't know whether to be sad or furious about her reaction. He just couldn't remember her ever having a truly sincere expression like this before. It made him feel as if he didn't know her. Hell, who cared!

    He looked out his foggy window. They had entered a sort of forest. The trees were close together but all the leaves and branches were high up, making only a small canapé that seemed to touch the sky. The sky itself was remarkably clear, with no moon in sight. Coming back down to earth, Draco admired the thick blanket of snow, dotted with tiny animal prints in some places. Seeing these reminded him that there was still some intelligent life on earth. Draco wished he was at home hunting rabbits alone or with his father. Still, this wasn't that bad either, at least he was safe. Nothing could taint the supreme feeling of security. Draco put his hand further into his cloak to feel the familiar black book resting there. His eyes snapped open. It was not.