Draco Nascent I: Valley of Shadows

Draco Nascent. Part I: Valley of Shadows.

Chapter Two: Darkness Never Ends

During his first year at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy fled the Forbidden Forest in fear. Now, in his sixth year, equal fear drove him into it.

He careened over rocks, flames, fallen bodies of students and Death Eaters. Whether dead, unconscious or Stupified, he didn't slow to see. The color green chased him blind, and the mad chanting in his head--coward, worthless, coward, worthless, meaningless, nothing NOTHING--never ceased. Inside the school walls the war brewed on, earlier having turned the grounds of Hogwarts into smoking pits and tossed stones of decay. Draco swatted at invisible images that formed in the choking air. Obscured holes opened beneath his cumbersome feet while shifting objects crawled to try and keep him in their grasp all the way into the forest.

"Worthless, meaningless," Draco murmured, stumbling over endless tangled hair roots. "Nothing at all." A branch whipped him across the face leaving a long trail of blood. Spider webs jumped on him and his crazed hands waged their own mad war.

Draco lurched over the merciless forest floor. A gauntlet of trees slapped him, poked at him and tore at his robes. Shredded pieces came off in their hands and fluttered to the forest floor as he leered blind in the darkness. His scuffed shoes sloshed in oozing puddles of silver blood while skeletal legs hooked at sightless ankles. Voices of the forest, crying of the cats, the moonlight howling, werewolves always lurking passed by and still Draco did not see. Centaurs pounded past, shouting at him--not a colt, look at him, what is he? What does he think they are doing--?

"Not worth life, not worth death--" Draco clutched at his throat. His legs bubbled pain and he collapsed onto the jagged dirt while ripping at his moonlight hair. The centaur's legs pummeled around and around and around...

Draco saw sunset red. Eyes--slitted eyes that gazed from his Father's mantle piece. He saw contorting, howling faces of house-elves waving their ratted, matted, burned skin, covered in oozing, pus-caked cuts--

Say it Draco! Lucius commanded.

"Crucio!" Draco gasped, throwing his head back onto an unyielding rock. "Crucio! Crucio!"

The wand screamed and he fell to his knees. He prayed up to his Father for mercy. Lucius' pointed face twisted in rage.

"A Malfoy does not give mercy!" Lucius shouted, backhanding him into the unforgiving floor.

...a set of knives, cutting into his flesh...

A Muggle family, two boys, a girl.

"Watch, Draco," Lucius said, before aiming his wand. He obeyed, as he said the words, and burgundy rivers began to rain out from their throats and across the floor. Lucius sneered at him. "Your turn."

Draco gasped, writhing on the knotted floor as the centaurs pounded on.

If a man could be beautiful, he was gorgeous. The black and silver robes enhanced the ghostly coolness of his eyes. Draco smirked proudly at himself in the mirror while straightening the silver snake-shaped clasps that matched the color of his lightening hair. He tod his head to admire better the suaveness of his own reflection.

His mother noticed his vain smirk. She appeared behind him and sank her teeth into the soft flesh behind his ear. Caught by surprise, Draco could not hide the quiet rasp of pain. In retribution, she yanked his wrists behind his back. A soft crack reached his ears as she twisted at an impossible angle.

"Only the weak scream," She hissed. "Only the weak resist. Aren't you strong, Draco? Come; show me your little dragon."

He realized the shrieks of pain were his own.

He could see their flesh peeling from their bodies, layer by layer, until they would bleed to death. Their sanity had already fled. The lidless eyes rolled back into heads from the shock.

"Father, do something!"

Lucius scowled down at him with nothing less than contempt.

"No. It's time you took up responsibility to the Malfoy family."

"Go on, Draco. Have some fun."

"Say it, Draco, say it!"

"Avada Kedavra, Avada Kedavra," Draco begged. "Let it end, oh please, I can't--I can't--"

Curling on the floor...muggle blood, silver blood. It was on him! A cursed life!

The green snake embraced his arm. Wouldn't father be so proud he caught a snake? Wouldn't father like to see? Someday, someday, the servants told him, he would go to school, just like his Mommy and Daddy and be a Slytherin serpent, just like them. And someday, they said, he would grow up and be a Malfoy just like his father.

A silver knife.

Slash.

"Unicorn's blood and manticore's tail," Lucius intoned. "Will make a Malfoy heir prevail.

"Kill them Draco!"

He saw the blood dripping down his hands, crawling up his arms. Red mixing with black and silver, flecks of green and yellow swirling over his robes. He clawed at it, at himself, ripping the Slytherin insignia from his robes, shredding the sleeves that hissed at him, twisted and biting. Still the pounding in his ears, the terror at the blood on his hands that pressed deeper into his flesh. The stolen blood of lives worth living! Green eyes scowled at him.

Harry Potter, the hero. The wizarding world's personal savior, with a grungy mop of black hair and flaming green eyes. Harry Potter, the literally marked man, just view his forehead. He recognized him from the robe shop in Diagon Alley.

"I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks."

"Come now, Draco. You don't want to be a goody-two-shoes muggle-lover like Harry Potter do you?" Lucius snapped.

Narcissa ran her fingers through his hair. He learned a long time ago to submit, to never move under her touch, and he stared up at the black curtained canopy.

"So fine, so fine," she murmured. "Sweeter than your Father."

She kissed him.

"You will track down this family and you will torture them," Lucius thrust the paper into his palm. "You will not stop until they bleed from their ears. There is no such thing as mercy."

"What of the two-year-old?"

Lucius sneered and lashed out at him. Draco raised his fingers to his temple where Lucius had struck him with his cane.

Draco gave the instructions to Blaise Zabini. "Make it look like I did it."

She kissed him.

Screaming, his throat raw. His Father yanked his body off the floor. Draco flew forward and down into the pit, into the fray of ripping flesh.

"Kill it Draco! You exist to obey me!"

Silver blood ran over his forehead, sticking to his skin. Trembling hands tried to push it out of his eyes but the blood kept seeping down his back, enfolding his chest, washing into the top of life--unicorn's blood--death's fingers pressing it into his skin, whispering the demon chants, hissing between fangs and holes and blood stained silver eyes....

Draco screamed.

He awoke to the midnight hour that never ends. For timeless ages of the world, Draco's pale silver eyes stared upward from his pathetic broken body encased in torn strips of cloth. They watched without seeing, the hidden bodies of spider in the limbs of the Forest spin webs and spar over prey. He did not think they were spiders. He thought nothing at all.

The hostile cold of the Forbidden Forest seeped into his core. In a vague way, Draco knew the warmth was seeping from his body and replaced with the frost from the artic forest floor. He did not fully register the ice penetrating his body as the spiders danced and danced in the silence and ignored the body below.

Eventually, they vanished. Whether higher into trees or moving off altogether, Draco could not discern. One moment they had been above him and the next completely non-existent. His eyes kept their corpse pose and frosted over as the last of his warmth drifted out of his flesh.

Draco waited.

What does it mean, cold?

Nothing came.

Because this darkness never ends.

He thought this, in the heart of the Forbidden Forest.

He closed his eyes.