Sea of Bitterness

Something was bothering Draco, and it wasn't that prat of a Potter boy as usual. In fact, Draco wasn't sure what it was. It was this feeling he had that somewhere, in some remote countryside, someone was in pain, someone was scared and suffering, and it pissed him off. Why should he imagine this compassion he felt in the depths of his soul for someone who probably didn't exist? He was perfectly sane as far as he knew. Of course being locked in the dungeon with rats and mice 12 times over Christmas holidays wasn't exactly something that would constitute the way to raise a healthy teenager. The happiness he felt because of his early return to Hogwarts surprised him. After all he was supposed to be dark, moody, and rebellious.

It was odd the way he felt concern for this faraway person, if he or she even did exist. It was more feeling than he had ever experience for anyone in his life, even his mother. Oh shit, now he was contemplating this imaginary friend of his. I really might be insane he thought, and rushed off to lunch in the Great Hall.

~

She stumbled along through the sinister looking forest. It was wet and dark. She could barely walk. The cuts and bruises were almost too painful to bear, and she was afraid. Not just of the possibility that her pursuers would catch her either, she was scared by the prospect that it was all for naught. That she would die, not of course an unwelcome end, but that she could not find a place to die. She did not want to be found by them and destroyed by them. If she were to depart this life, she would destroy herself. As this thought crossed her mind, she knew that she would have the strength to throw her life away if presented with the choice.

Just then, she felt something nagging at the back of her mind. It was strangely familiar, yet she could not place it. She had never felt a feeling like this before. It seemed so far away. As if someone else was empathetic toward her plight. Yet then, whoever it was, dismissed the one thought that had given her hope. She had felt a sense of security. She had believed that perhaps, there was a chance that someone, somewhere was watching over her. Caring for her, that the ending for her at least would a happy one. But as the window between the two unlikely souls vanished, these wishful thoughts were vanquished once again by contemplation of suicide.

~

Lunch had been delicious, and now Draco was finally settled after his so called "encounter with the unknown". Unfortunately, Crabbe and Goyle wouldn't stop following him around. I mean can't I ask for a little solitude without being rudely interrupted by those two oafs? he wondered ruefully. Followed closely by the two stooges, he started making his way to the Slytherin common room.

Once they were safely in their lair, Crabbe and Goyle, who had walked along in stupid silence during their trek, now approached Draco, arguing in hushed voices as they joined him at the far end of the common room.

"Ummmm...." Crabbe stumbled along dumbly, "We've noticed that girls don't like us much...."

"Yes," Draco sneered, "and what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Well we also noticed that girls tend to swoon over you," added Goyle idiotically.

"Wow, swoon, a five letter word Goyle. Your vocabulary has improved immensely."

"Thanks Draco."

"No problem at all. Well you two, go on."

"We haven't really cared that much....until...ummmmm...the past few years, but now we kinda do care," Crabbe stuttered, as Goyle sat nodding behind him. "We want you to tell us how to get girls to like us."

"I don't agree with you at all," Draco replied in his most sarcastic voice. "I think most of the girls in Slytherin fancy you two immensely. Especially Pansy and Blaise. In fact they were asking about you just the other day. Why don't you guys go and talk to them?"

Crabbe and Goyle sidled off to find the girls and Draco sat up abruptly, almost as if to stop them, but then he reconsidered and leaned back, grinning to himself. Besides, he was tired, not that he knew why. There was no reason why he should be especially drained today, but he was.

"Maybe it has something to do with....," he yawned, but then he drifted off to sleep imagining the expressionless faces of Crabbe and Goyle and mumbled questions that would greet him later, after the two had been turned down by all the Slytherin girls. He never finished this thought, though, and no one present noticed as one of their peers slipped off in to dreamland.

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~

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She had traveled slowly and agonizingly through the forest until the trees began farther and farther apart. They tapered down in numbers and finally disappeared altogether, replaced by a gray-looking meadow. Perhaps it had been beautiful once, but now it was torn apart. It looked old and burned. It looked ready to die, and because of this she felt a certain amount of belonging.

The grass that had been dried out by the fire was now drenched with rain, and now that she was out of the protection of the forest, so was she. This graveyard of tumbleweeds and charred grass seemed to stretch on forever. It will be a graveyard for more than that soon enough, she reflected. She stopped to catch her breath for a moment, just enough time for the pain in her legs and bleeding feet to start ebbing away, before she went on again.

Her shoes had become an obstacle long ago, as they whipped around her ankles, with no soles, catching on twigs and undergrowth. This was the only time she had paused longer than a few seconds, and she did so only because she knew that it would make up for the time spent untangling herself from bushes and shrubbery. She had also torn off most of the bottom of her pants, so they now came down barely past her knees. She had been cold at first, but the constant movement had her served to keep her body temperature from dropping too far.

She had packed lightly, if you could actually say that. Her departure had been somewhat spontaneous, and though she had been able to grab several things that would have been useful to her, they had proved to heavy for her aching body and she had abandoned them with little ceremony. She buried it all, almost everything, digging in the wet soil with her wounded hands. She would have just dropped her things, but that would make her easier to follow. All she had left now was a thin long piece of wood, and a small knife. Any ordinary person might have wondered exactly why she decided to keep that piece of wood, out of all the things she could have brought, but this thought would have never entered the girl's mind. So then, normal people would speculate that this was a special piece of wood, and in this, they would be right, but no Muggle would ever guess the way in which this wood was special.

The girl thought she saw something just then, a variation in what was before the tedious pattern of the horizon. At first she dismissed as impossible, but after staring ahead for several minutes as she staggered along she accepted it as truth. It was a line, thin and generally pretty straight, though it did curve a bit. On the other side of this stripe the monotony of the dismal field continued. As she approached it, this one streak of bright color in the world surrounding her, it grew wider.

Several minutes later, one of her bare feet pushed its way cautiously out of the scorched grass and gingerly rested down on the wet dust of a road. Her second foot followed willingly, and she stood there, a slight smile on her face, hopeful for the first substantial time. Maybe I can make it. Maybe I won't have to kill myself. Maybe I can live again. These were the last thoughts in her mind before everything slid into darkness and her thin, fatigued body thudded dully to the damp ground.

~

Far away, a dim light in an isolated corner in the mind of Draco Malfoy that had been burning peacefully from the time he was a very small child, flickered. For the fist time since he was an infant this light sputtered, and faded and then went into darkness altogether. Draco didn't notice though, he was busy dreaming of his life in a parallel universe, where his parents loved him more than anything, where he was happy, truly happy for the first time in his life.