The River

The River

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Chapter Three:
Pains and Pandora's Shame

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"Malfoy!" Harry shrieked as he jumped off the log, setting a large distance between Draco and himself, "What the Hell?"

"What?" Draco countered in question. There was a confused expression on his face.

"What do you mean, 'what?'" Harry said angrily.

"Just that..." the blond said standing up and taking a step toward Harry. The Gryffindor hastily retreated a step.

"Just don't," Harry said quietly, "Stay away from me. Stay away, Malfoy."

"Let me explain," Draco demanded loudly.

"No," the raven-haired boy countered, "That's pointless."

"Potter, just let me-" Draco began to plead. Harry put his hands over his ears and shook his head.

"God damn it, Malfoy! Shut up!" Harry shouted. To his surprise, Draco didn't reply. The blond had sat back down on the log and eyes were toward the earth. Harry sighed as he looked at Draco. The Gryffindor was confused and didn't know exactly what had happened, though he had a thought of what it could be. With a rushing sound, Harry turned and dashed from the clearing and down the same path Pansy had walk down earlier that day. Once Harry's shadow had slipped from sight, Draco groaned and clamped his hands to the side of his face.

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Back in his dorm, Draco lie awake in the inky darkness staring up at the ceiling above from his wide, pale eyes. His mind was blank and empty like the hollow in his near-petrified heart. Rejection. Twice in less than twenty-four hours Draco had been hurt in some way or another. He had been walked out on by both false and true love. He sighed into the blackness above searching the cryptic, somber night for an answer. Outside his window, thunder crashed in the distance and a faint sheet of lightning illuminated the dorm with enough light to make out the shape of the beds of Draco's dorm mates.

Would the tempestuous night offer no solution, no resolution?

Slowly, while he listened vigilantly to the roar of thunder coming closer until it sounded but a stone's throw away, Draco's demons and worst nightmares began to arise inside him as the bright flashes of light blurred the vision of reality with his phantasmic illusions. The heavy pounding of rain on the windowpane forced Draco's eyes to stay wide as their sound was like that of far off hoof beats. The hoof beats of horses ridden by long dead Hessians driven mad and born by the tempest sent from Hell. Servants of Dark Lords, the creatures of eternal night known only as "Pandora's Shame" - compiled of pure evil and fueled by undying hatred.

As the sands of time ran slowly away, Draco's eyelids became heavy, his vision became blurred and, just before the first rays of morning pierced Draco's nightmarish world, he slid into a deep, still slumber. The young blond had spent the whole of the night lying awake, staring at a wall, listening to the rain and letting his demons hold him tight. Had he turned his head, just once, he would have seen the small, nondescript wooden box set atop his bedside table.