Casualties of War

Draco Malfoy coughs up blood as he struggles into awareness. He can't remember where he is at first, or why it's so dark. He lies on his back and tastes blood in his mouth. He squeezes his eyes shut and gasps for air. He can feel grass underneath him, hear the whispering of trees above him. He is outside, then. His stomach twists and he barely manages to whip onto his side before vomiting, choking on it. The spasms seem to last for hours, and he barely has the presence of mind to wipe his mouth before sliding over onto his back again. He wants to move away from the mess he's just made, but can't seem to communicate the desire to his body. Every breath hurts. He smells burned flesh through the vomit still on his face, but it takes him some time to remember why, exactly, he smells it.

He pulls himself to a sitting potion, shaking. His lips tremble and he fights back tears for the first time in years. He can't open his eyes yet, and see what is only inches away from him. He remembers what it is, or was. He has the insane urge to reach out and touch it. He remembers why he's here, in the middle of the woods, alone. He doesn't remember why he's still alive, whether there's a reason for it. He gives up and curls himself into a fetal position, still not looking at the charred mass next to him that used to be a human being. He gives up and lets the darkness swallow him.

He is surprised again when he wakes and it is morning. The smell of the corpse has saturated his senses and he gags on it. His right arm burns him, and he lifts it tight to his chest, curling around the limb. His body tries to vomit again, but there is nothing left inside of him. He shakes with the effort anyway, wiping at the string of fluid that was the only thing he could get his stomach to give up. He staggers to his feet, desperate to get away from - from the body, god he almost used its name, and the puddle on the other side of him, the product of last night. He lurches toward and almost collapses against the closest tree, and only then realizes that he is nearly naked. This fact overwhelms him in a way the corpse and his badly wounded and humiliated state have not, and he burst into tears. He looks back and sees the ruin of his pants and robes on the ground, and yanks on the remnants of his shirt desperately, mindlessly, trying to cover himself. He sinks to his knees and it is some time before he can rise again, his hand still clenched on the bottom of his shirt.

It is in this way that he makes his way through the forest, a direction picked at random. There is no thought, no plan in his head. He thinks he walks for hours, stumbling. He leans on trees whenever he falls down, and pushes himself from one tree to the next to keep going. The option of giving up will cross his mind in a while, but now there is only the need to keep moving, to get away from that thing in the clearing. Her screams to him echo in his head and even now, after all that has happened, the thought still freezes him: I should have done something. He can still feel the beat of her heart against his chest, and he tries to press the fingers of his right hand against his chest, against the residual warmth of her body in his mind. It is with no little shock that he looks down and sees that his hand has been burned black, the skin dead and cracked. Brilliantly raw red flesh winks at him as he flexes his fingers almost absently. It is as testament to his horror that he feels no pain.

It is no great surprise when he sees Hogwarts rising in the distance, to realize that he was in the Forbidden Forestthe whole time. He sags against a tree and stares at the castle without seeing it, trying to summon the willpower to cross the grounds as he is, filthy and hurt and nearly naked. He takes a step, and another, faltering. He can't do it, can't let people see him like that. The shame of his body overwhelms the need not to hurt any more, to be clean. A sob escapes him and he turns away from salvation, stumbling into the forest with no idea of what to do, where to go.

He only looks up when the centaur is directly in front of him. Firenze's appearance only terrifies him; he hasn't seen a centaur since his detention with Hagrid and Potter, his first year. He scoops Draco up easily as the boy tries to flee, and gallops towards the castle with a hard expression on his face that is the last thing he sees as he passes out once more.

Regaining consciousness is like fighting through layers of cotton. He is dizzy and thinks that he might be sick again. He can barely open his eyes: the light blinds him, the white blinds him. He smells antiseptic and the bed he is lying on has scratchy sheets. A moan is the only sound that he can make. Immediately, he feels pressure on his hand and hears a voice speaking. The voice drifts away, the words incoherent and forgotten immediately, but he clings to it anyway, chasing it back to awareness. He opens his eyes and Professor Snape sits in the chair next to his hospital bed, something akin to worry darkening his eyes.

For just a moment, Draco basks in the attention of his teacher, security an automatic response before he feels the bottom of his stomach drop. He yanks his hand away, too afraid even to speak. Death Eater. My father's friend. - oh god, they know where I am, they'll come to get me -

Snape snatches at his wrists, hissing. Panic rises in Draco's chest. He never wanted to die, never wanted anything like this to happen (I should have done something) it is all he can do not to scream for Pansy, and as his eyes roll back inside his head it all floods to the front.

She didn't want to (neither did I) and screamed and kicked while they all stood and watched two of the adults hold her down and. They were the only ones unmasked, their children, the sons and daughters, she didn't want to. Neither did I. They wouldn't have hurt her if she had just let them brand her,it wouldn't have been any worse than what happened to the rest of them. They wouldn't have hurt her but she kept screaming his name, kept calling to him, help me help me while he stood there, numbly, I should do something. Stood there when they ripped her clothes, the marks on her body plain for everyone to see. I should do something. When she broke away and ran for him, his arms closed around her automatically, and held her tight. He could feel the beat of her heart against his chest, and they sunk to their knees together as the Death Eaters closed in, faces buried in each other's necks. Two lost children in the woods, and she clung to his hand even when they tore her away and pinned them both down and - and - and even when they lit her ablaze her fingers were locked to his, no matter how hard he tried to pull away. He tried to pull away from her, it hurt so badly, he didn't want to.

He didn't want to.