Holes (Vacillation Mix)

Holes (Vacillation Remix)

1.1 The wand, wedged between two stones, is smudged with dust and half covered by the crumbling detritus that drifts into the cell complex. It's been building up since Potter was dumped in the cell across from him. No one comes down to gloat and the beatings tapered off when the wand was still a dream. No one's touched Potter. There's probably no use to it, or entertainment, in his condition.

Holly for a holiness no one really believes in any more. Wealth, which the Potters have always had plenty of, despite how many of them collected meagre Ministry salaries or played at being professional Quidditch enthusiasts. The family vault is probably full up, even now, with sickles and galleons. Revenge, which is the one that always makes him laugh. A phoenix feather, from Dumbledore's pet, he's learned.

His own wand was hazel, nine inches and a dragon heartstring from a Welsh Green. He's ground his fingers to mash, trying to get at Potter's. Holly is flexible enough that being thrown around the tiny, makeshift dungeon hasn't broken it. Good for Defense. Another thing Potter told him - or told the cell walls, it as much as makes no difference - as if it was the most fascinating bit of information in the world.

Potter's babble has become as familiar as the dull thunk he's rewarded with when his head hits the bars of his cell; as familiar as the frantic buzz of flies, caught in the sticky mess of his robes; as familiar as his thoughts, skittering around and around and never getting anywhere. It isn't constant and neither is he.

Minutes, has it only been minutes?

The wand is an accusation and a reminder. It sits perfectly out of reach, where his one choice in this whole nightmare, put it.

"Look, I'd do it myself, but your wand would likely take my hand off, or turn me inside out."

"Do you really think so?"

He is done. Done, unspooling like thread onto the floor.

1.2 His face, already pressed into the bars, contorts painfully. His snarl is a gnash of teeth against blackened metal. "That's not the point, you stupid fool. The point is that you have a wand! They didn't take it when they stuck you in here. So stop this fucking pondering and do what you're supposed to!"

"What's that?" Potter seems genuinely puzzled. He lost his appetite for games months ago. Fuck him.

He lets go of the bars, slams his fists against them. Feels nothing. "Save us! Open the doors, curse the guards who are probably upstairs, then get us outside so we can Apparate as far away as possible. Maybe take out the Dark Lord if you have a spare minute. God damn it, Potter, what's wrong with you?"

Nothing. He does nothing. Sits and considers his wand, like Draco's words are meaningless. Like he has all the time in the world and no cares to go with it. He moves, finally, but slow, like the trickle of water you could get out of the tap in the first floor boys' bathroom in Hogwarts, if you turned the faucet all the way. Drip. Drip. To the bars of his cell. Kneeling and reaching for the wand. Drip. Standing, and just staring at it.

"What are you waiting for? Do I need to remind you why we're here? Death, dismemberment, Dark rituals? If I didn't know better, I'd..."

This is another game. Potter plays the fool, either on instructions from upstairs - extra bread rations - or on his own initiative. He likes games. With Weasley and Granger and Longbottom. Quidditch and the Chamber of Secrets and that ridiculous club. He hates to lose. Potter is a gambler and when he loses he takes all the other gamblers with him.

It's a game. This is a game, but if Draco didn't know better...

"Oh god."

1.3 When he comes to, the cell across from him is occupied. Good morning. The sound of breathing and a faint shuffling inform him. The guards are louder, surer. With nothing to fear, they can breathe as loud as they like, shuffle as annoyingly as they can manage. His neighbor is mouse quiet but still grates on Draco's nerves.

He lifts his head and squints blearily. He makes out a lump of dark fabric and blinks frantically. Robes. Another wizard.

He knows they keep Muggles at times. He remembers his father - rows and rows of caged Muggles and some purpose that haunted even Lucius. That was the story he had of him, at least. But he knows the Muggles are real because he saw Crabbe and Goyle's fathers with that stunned Muggle boy and they were too lacking in creativity take that kind of initiative. He hadn't wanted to know where the boy would end up. He certainly doesn't want to be caged with a Muggle.

Robes. Old boots, not cheap but worn with use, that knock together softly, toe to toe. His neighbor is hunched over. Draco blinks, against some stray filth and manages to unlock an arm from its inertial resting place against his chest, and roughly rub his eyes. They're sore and the rubbing makes it worse, but his vision clears. The watery spots that cloud his peripheral vision remain. Hair mussed into a bird's nest, complete with twigs and cobwebs and meters of glass peeking out from behind.

Potter has his arms wrapped tight around his knees, a long, thin stick clutched awkwardly against him. His lips move, silently tracing thought.

Potter. Fucking Harry Potter. It might as well be a Muggle. Potter lifts his pathetic stick and points it at the cell bars.

Draco's breath catches in his throat and he pushes himself upright. Oh god, he thinks. Oh god.

Potter's brow used to fold and crinkle, and his mouth always shrunk into a slight frown, when he was working charms. In later years that started to disappear, when the charms came more easily. He is blank faced, still. His lips unmoving. His wand dips.

Draco's breath forces its way out of his throat before anything happens and he's still waiting when he draws in another. Still waiting when the dizziness beings to let up. And still waiting when Potter curls his wand arm around his knees again, the wand only loosely held by his dirty fingers. Potter is untroubled.

"What are you doing?" he asks, but Potter gives no sign of having heard him. Potter, he decides, is either completely unaware of him - idiot - or ignoring him - wanker.

Draco seethes. But he waits through Potter ineffectively shaking his wand at the bars to his cell, and starts chewing his bottom lip when Potter begins to scratch himself with it, absently. "Potter," he yells, and is finally rewarded with the hero's attention. His gaze, when it meets Draco's is as blank as it is contemplating the walls, the floor, the bars of his cell and his wand. Potter stares through him. It's not such a change from their last year at Hogwarts.

If he had Potter's wand--

If he had his wand Draco would be through the doors and out of here, as quickly as his hands and voice could manage. If he had his wand, Draco would be in New Delhi, which is nice this time of year, or Rio de Janeiro. His mother likes the markets. He hates the Muggles, but the witches are pleasant.

If Potter doesn't hurry up and open the door, he's going to--

The wand skitters across the floor, away from Potter's cell and comes to a stop against the bars of his cell. "Shite, now look what you've done. I'll kick it over to you, and then you can try again."

"I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?" He is beyond incredulous. He doesn't care if Potter is exhausted from battle. He doesn't care if he's sick, unhappy, grieving or lazy. He doesn't fucking well care if Crabbe and Goyle tossed him down the stairs and kicked him into his cell. He doesn't care if Potter is playing --

No, he cares because if Potter is playing with him, Draco really does not care how strong the bars are, he's going to kill Potter. Draco wants out.

"I just can't. It doesn't work anymore."

Draco blinks. His vision threatens to cloud over. "That's. That's the stupidist thing I've ever heard. There you are, with all your parts working and a bloody *wand*, and you're still sitting in here. More importantly, I'm still sitting in here. It's not broken, you haven't forgotten how to say 'Alohomora,' so pick up the wand and get us out of here!"

Potter turns to him, his stare devoid of concern. "Oh I forgot. You wouldn't know. You were asleep when I got here."

1.4 He finds it difficult to believe that outside these dusty walls, time passes. Inside, here, without proof of its existence, time has ceased to have any meaning. Today I scratched open one of the scabs on the back of my neck, he thinks, but today could be yesterday, or tomorrow. The third Friday of August, possibly.

Is it still July, outside these walls?

Inside, there are no months, or days - only the too brief visits of the guards and Draco, Draco in between. His captors have frozen everything around him, stoppered time in the stone and steel, but left Draco to deteriorate. His life is seeping out to pool on the floor, which is impervious to him. He touches nothing.

He doesn't forget things. He read once, that prisoners forget things with time. Deprivation forces them to focus on small things, perhaps a few happy memories, but other, even very important memories slip away. When released, they are surprised by their family's faces, the smell of fresh scones and cream. Draco remembers everything.

When his heartbeat races, impossibly fast and so, so out of control, he remembers sparrows.

There was a nest in the tree by his bedroom window and he spent the majority of his thirteenth summer hunting it out. When he found it, the parents were out, perhaps finding supper - he was never sure. The eggs were small and he was shocked when one of them cracked wide open. Were eggs meant to hatch in July? The bird clawed and screeched its way out of the broken shell, sticky and dark. When it finally made its way out, it stared at him. Tiny black, depthless eyes stared at him and they were both struck dumb. The bird, at least, had an excuse.

He remembers its heart, thumping faster and faster against his fingertips. Skin, hidden by sodden feathers, thin - hardly protection for that surely enormous heart.

He takes deep breaths, from his belly. In through the nose and out through the mouth, though his heart keeps beating fast against his skin.

Everything here is grey, though it isn't dark. He remembers being afraid of the dark. The walls are grey. The bars, the floor, the dust is grey. His skin is grey, and his hair, matted against his arms and legs, is grey. He determines that he has not lost his ability to percieve colour by licking a stripe across the palm of his hand, over and over until he sees the faintest hint of pink, and beneath it, blue.

His mother used to read his palm, for his fortune. He was meant to marry a pretty German girl and have three children. She wasn't sure how many would be sons, but she was convinced her daughter in law was to be German. She'd tell him bad things, too. Like how he was going to die young, at seventy. Draco would weaken his liver past the point of mediwizardy being able to do anything, with wine. Very fine wines, though. That's how he knew she wasn't lying. She never told him stories, as a child.

What he should have remembered, is that she made only average marks in Divination and never claimed to be a seer.

Is it possible to cheat your hands? Can something be so out of character, so strange to the universe, that it surprises destiny?

"Would all your parts just... just fall out, without skin to hold them in?"

He learns to mark time as the space between Potter's idiotic words. It's racing, racing past him and the wand is still.

He doesn't remember fearlessness. It is unknown to him, but he could take the wand and try to use it. Hazel and holly, dragon and phoenix. He has no affinity for either wood or core and he has never, as much as he has tried, understood Potter in the least. Potter has never been like the faceless man who sits across from him. But it is him.

He remembers Potter.

He calls the wand, with all his will and it flies across the room and into his hand. He always boasted about his power, but wandless magic was something else. Draco had no idea he had so much power.

He cracks the bars to his cell right across the center and bends them up and down. He can barely control the forces that pour out of him, like a flood.

Potter stares up at him, in shock. Draco smirks.

Crack and Potter's cell is open too. "Come," he says and waves Potter out.

They run up the stairs and--

Draco hurts. Every part of him hurts and the wand is still. Like something dead. They both stare at it.

What would his father say, if he asked him why?

Draco has thought about what he would do if he was taken to see the Dark Lord. He has speeches planned, and he even, in a rare - he'll admit - moment of honesty, he thought about contingencies in case he broke down, or couldn't talk at all.

His father would be there too.

Right now, this very moment, they are killing someone.

Draco doesn't know what he would say.

"Would all your parts just... just fall out, without skin to hold them in?"

1.5 Potter flings the wand away from him again, as if it's useless. This time, when it bounces out of his cell, barely clearing the bars, it sticks between two stones, too far for Draco to get at. He could press himself against the bars until his flesh threatened to burst out of his skin and through the spaces between the bars, but he couldn't reach the wand. Draco is intimately acquainted with the dimensions of his cell. Just one stone over, or another. Just a little bit closer and he might be able to tap it with his foot, if he stretched.

He measures the distance with his eyes, again and again, always coming up short. The cell is empty. There is a very small hole in the floor that leads somewhere so far down, he's never heard his shit hit bottom. It shouldn't be that deep. He has no tools, nothing.

The wand is wedged so perfectly he'd have to be right over it, to pull it out. Even if he had a rope...

"I don't feel different, and I'm not bleeding. Anymore. But it doesn't work, and I know it's supposed to... it's supposed to work." Potter's face screws up, and his fists clench. He isn't-- He isn't playing. Draco tries to think of anything - anything - that could do this. That could have Potter so scattered. He discards potions, talismans, curses. Draco has never encountered anything like this that wasn't simply healed by a mediwizard.

If he could just--

If Potter could get hold of his wand again, they'd have a chance. Something.

"Calm down. Just calm down. We'll figure it out, and you'll be fine. You're Harry Potter; of course we'll be all right. They won't be down for a few hours. We have time."

Potter shakes his head and scratches his nails over his face, in frustration. Frustration, an emotion. This is Potter. Right here He's bleeding. "I remember a word. Two. Maybe it will help. I think so. I think they're, they're strong words."

Draco's on his knees and pressed against the bars as soon as his body is able. "What words, Potter? Are they Latin? Foreign? Do they bring things to you? Because I don't think I can reach your wand."

"The shiny man said it. He waved at me, and it hurt my eyes. I was falling, and I couldn't breathe, and he wasn't talking to me anyway. He was saying it to somebody else. He could have been shiny too, but I couldn't see him."

"What Potter? Please, concentrate for a minute and tell me what he said! Remember!"

1.6 The roll of Potter's wand against his fingers is rough. His hands are awkward and the seemingly unpracticed motion appears to require all Potter's attention. Draco is dismissed, and his words are locked in a futile trajectory, banging against the walls of Potter's attention. Obviously Potter has more important things to think about. Like... like fucking magical theory. The meaning of life is surely next.

The wand, which he refuses to use, spreads Potter's blood over his hands, turning them a slightly brighter shade of mud brown than they'd been.

"It's hot down here. Do you think that's strange? I don't think it's supposed to be hot, underground. With no windows and all. Or this dusty...and I thought it was supposed to be colder. Scarier." Potter has never been this still, not his body or his voice - his voice is so bland, so placidly curious.

Who taught him this?

All over his body, nerves twitch and Draco's fingers clutch the bars tighter, his back snaps into a harsher line. His movement is near-phantom and even this hurts. Potter just sits there, still still still and happy to stay just as he is. Draco might as well be halfway around the world.

"I'm bleeding out of my nose and my arsehole, Potter, every time I breathe or move. Just a little, but I think the shooting pains in my lungs and lower back are *hints* that I might pass out and choke to death in the next few hours. That's pretty fucking scary to me."

"Oh. I'm... I'm sorry. I'll stop thinking about it. It's probably not helping, anyway. Sorry."

Sorry. Potter is *sorry*. He could kill him.

Draco could find a way, somehow, to get out of his cell and shove that wand straight through the thick lens and right into one of Potter's cow eyes. The glass would shatter against his skin and Potter would bleed and fucking scream. His hands would paw desperately at his eyes. They'd be dirty, and truly bloody - wet and red.

He feels a cough coming, and braces himself, hoping to get the words out first. He wants to spit them out, like Snape. Instead his voice is just heavy with phlegm. "No need to apologize. I'll just knock myself out again, and when I wake up, I'll either be dead or safe at Hogwarts. No need to alter your plans on my account." The breath he takes in is harsh, like ice to dried and cracked skin. He spits a gob of phlegm and blood onto the floor, outside his cell.

What are you sorry for, Potter?

That you're here?

That I am, or perhaps that you're here with me?

Does watching me die make you all the more sorry?

Potter is startled into motion, pointing his wand at the bars and asking them to open. As much conviction and power goes into this as any of his ramblings. His eyes are gone liquid black. Draco chokes on a sob.

"Oh, I remember. Al--alo--alohomora. That's what you said, right? Alohomora! Alohomora!" Nothing. Potter shakes the wand like a child, Muggle-stupid, and trying to reckon how magic came out from a stick. The barest lines of frustration crease his docile face.

"Potter? Oh, god. What did they do to you?"

1.7 "Sorry. I just don't want to disappoint you."

1.8 Draco drags his finger down the index. The tome is heavy and the edges dig sharply into his knees, despite being softened with age. The parchment sheets are worn slippery and not even licking the tip of his finger keeps them from getting away from him. When his father told him that the pages of the book were difficult to turn, Draco hadn't thought he meant it literally.

There are books in the library that resist yielding their contents. Some have even been known to bite. He put that ridiculous book of Hagrid's with them - he keeps all his books - though it's really meant to be on the other side of the room. It gets on with its neighbors.

"The book doesn't mind being read, but it's a trickster," his father said. Watch it carefully."

It takes Draco seven tries to get past the start of the 'L' section. It's a boring section.

It's half past, before he finds a curse to cause ivy to grow from your victim's skin. This one has potential, he decides, and makes a note to learn that one in time for the school year. A ribbon marks the curse for him. He flips forward.

"... victims display reduced creativity, determination, concentration, rationality, empathy..."

Intrigued, he turns back to the beginning of the entry.

End.

Between extremities

Man runs his course;

A brand, or flaming breath,

Comes to destroy

All those antinomies

Of day and night;

The body calls it death,

The heart remorse.

What is joy?

- Yeats