Blood Clot

Draco's POV

PART THIRTEEN

Incision

Aliens. I felt like I was surrounded by aliens from another planet, foreigners from another country, as if I had been transported to the past or future. Nothing was familiar to me. And everything, everything, even things that used to be comprehensible, seemed to suddenly be inexplicable and detrimental.

Each bit of this confusion lasted one moment, and many moments added up to still a short period of time, and yet seemed like a thousand decades. I stood outside my compartment, holding my belongings, feeling as if everything I touched, and everything that touched me, was almost nonexistent, to the point of my being almost unable to feel anything at all. I was numb. The only thing I could feel were my lips, my face, any small portion of my skin that Potter had touched.

For a moment, that horrid moment after Potter landed, all was silent. Horrible silence, oh god, how it tortured me, so strong it was that the silence itself rang in my ears! His body lay crumpled, so bereft of the spirit that had been glowing in his gorgeous emerald eyes moments before. Words, horrible, desperate words spilled from my mouth, I unable to understand a single one, dizzy with the hurt inside and out of me; a yell had pierced the air, and I had realized it was my own. Then, chaos broke out, and as Gryffindors, professors, so many people came rushing in, I stood alone for a minute. I dared to stay a minute among the aliens, before I could stand it no more.

But I had left the compartment, and then...then... I was on the floor, limp, ready to welcome death to my door. I was blind to reality, deaf, mute, the only thing that lived and kept me alive was the memory of the soft touch of his lips on mine. That was when the harsh, hard floor met me. So numb was I that I did not feel it for a moment. But then the memory was burned away, and in flooded the pain, the regret, the sorrow. I let my anguish swallow me up, let myself sink into it. As I closed my eyes, seeing and yet not seeing, my vision blank yet filled with colours, I exhaled, willing and wishing the breath to be my last.

-----*-----

Blood. It had always fascinated me, the way the crimson liquid would appear from nowhere by the simple action of slitting my own skin. This crimson liquid would slide slowly, thick and dark against my skin. The pain was there, burning at me, but burning from a distance. My gaze fixated on the blood, the drops that splashed from my wrist to stain the rug.

It was so simple to summon blood. That's what I loved about it. It was simplicity. It was release. It was art. It was innocence. It was delicacy. It made my life poignant. So, for brief bites of time when I would take up something sharp, and slowly, lovingly, wonderingly watch my skin split and then bleed, I would have a taste of something close to happiness.

-----*-----

Memories. It's strange, how they can bring you into another world. Almost like a book, but a book you've read a million times before. I read my books too many times, pondering over the mysteries of life and regretting my past too much.

I knew that I was breaking myself. Maybe I was already broken. Like Potter had been after the train accident. Broken like that, limp, emotionless, twisted. Wrong. Everything I thought about always led back to him. But every memory related to him brought me pain. Nevertheless, I drank this pain. It was as if I was in a desert. Regardless of the contaminated state of the water, I still drank the water of the oasis like it was nectar. I sat for hours in front of the fire, remembering.

That was all I did. Life had no point anymore. I was useless. Of course I was. I was never taught anything substantial in life, anything that could help me in any future other than one as a Death Eater. Maybe that was the reason why I had been so ambitious in the past--Lucius pounded into my skull only things relating to the Dark Arts, things that would, he had hoped, make me become a carbon copy of himself. But now Lucius couldn't control me. I wouldn't bow at anyone's feet. The only thing or person that was capable of hurting me now was myself.

So that's what I did, every second of every minute, every minute of every hour, every hour of every day, every day of every week, every week of every month. These months of hurting myself, giving myself pain so that I could feel anything at all...these months turned into years. Inside, I was rotting. I was breaking. All hopes for anything were destroyed. I was like a machine, a boring, dull, emotionless, useless robot.

Someday, I supposed, this robot might self destruct.

Draco's POV

PART FOURTEEN

Whispers

I was haunted. Haunted by the memories of my harsh past, haunted by dead wishes for the future, but mostly, I was haunted by the whispers. They spoke to me, advisors, my only company. But mostly, they were punishers. They helped me to break faster, to destroy myself with a bit of the loneliness gone. They made everything hurt me all the more.

It all began one autumn day. I had just recently left Hogwarts, after turning eighteen. For me, there had been no thrill in "graduating." Not that it was really graduating. There was no graduating in magical schools. You just left after your seventh year. There was no repeating years if you got bad grades. Dumbledore wouldn't have been that unkind to any student, anyway. He was too apt to seeing the potential in every student to realize some were just in the wrong mind set for learning.

My house--well, castle, really--was actually one I was renting. I hadn't wanted to bother searching for the perfect building to live in, or have to build one, and didn't care that much. As long as Lucius was in Malfoy Manor, I wouldn't live there; the bastard was intolerable. No more could we live in the same place compatibly. Besides, I was an adult, so I felt I had a right to leave home. I had been living alone in my castle for a long time now, content--to an extent, that is.

I was sitting, as usual, brooding by the crackling fire, watching the trees sway in the wind like flaming torches. Then I heard a whisper.

Aren't you tired of it all, Draco?

Tired of what? Get out of my mind, whoever you are. I don't need someone to talk to. I can talk to myself just fine.

Get your feet off the ground. Grab your broom. Fly through the air. It's been years, Draco. Don't you want to stop brooding?

Don't tell me what to do! I don't need your petty advice and stupid questions. If I wanted to stop brooding, I would.

It's all you ever do these days, Draco. If you could put yourself back together, then maybe your life wouldn't waste away.

Shut up!

Oh, but I won't shut up, Draco. You can't make me. I've decided to set up permanent camp in your mind. It's quite interesting, you know. I love wading through the mind of a helpless soul.

I said, shut UP! I'm not helpless, you bastard. I do what I want, when I want, where I want. And I don't want to put myself back together. What's the use of that?

You could always visit him, you know. He's not dead.

I refuse to listen to you anymore. I'm sorry, but I don't listen to mindless babble.

Then I guess you don't listen to yourself?

Earth is full, mate. Go home.

For a while, then, it shut up. But the next day, he was back, and there were more of them with him. I called he and his mates "him," because although they were irritating enough to be, I couldn't stand the thought of having so much of my time and mind filled with women's voices. Tons of them, all whispering at me furiously. Telling me what to do, singing songs, murmuring insults. But mostly, they tortured me, skimmed through my book of memories, taking out the most painful pieces, and reciting them to me, my thoughts of them at the time. I couldn't block them out.

You know, boredom is the root of creativity. You have to be pretty bored to think up something creative. What's wrong with you?

Yeah, really, Draco, what is wrong with you? You're suppressing the voice that screams BOREDOM! BOREDOM! STOP THE BOREDOM! I AM SO BORED!" and instead you're sitting there all day, being as uncreative as I think is humanly possible.

BOREDOM! BOREDOM! STOP THE BOREDOM! I AM SO BORED!

I would much rather sit here than let that shrill voice use my vocal cords to turn me hoarse, thank you very much.

You are so unkind to us, Draco. Let us talk to you. You have issues. You are, let's say...emotionally and mentally challenged. Basically, you're insane, Draco. You're breaking yourself willingly, how crazy can that be? Let us talk to you, and you might not be forced to go to the loony bin.

If I throw a stick, will you leave?

What an attitude, Draco.

I don't have an attitude. I have a personality you can't handle. Do they ever shut up on your planet?

After I said that, chaos ensued, and eventually, as the months passed by, I began to talk to the whispers in my mind more than I brooded or spoke aloud to myself.

Draco's POV

PART FIFTEEN

Katrina

Katrina. She was my favorite so far. She was the exact opposite of the first whisper that had ever whispered to me. And she was real, someone human. The whispers had been partly right. I was insane. But speaking to them was part of what caused it, as well as my ritual blood feast. I was surprised they didn't put me in Azkaban, calling me vampiristic, or put me in a hospital because of how much blood I had lost [due to cutting].

Instead, they put me in Mungo's--the loony bin. So there I sat, day by day passing by, me barely knowing the difference. Katrina was the woman who, like me, would simply sit in a chair in the lobby room all day long. Except, unlike me, who barely ever spoke at all, unless mentally to my whispers, she would rave and yell and gesture her arms frantically. It was quite entertaining. I had heard that she was said to be able to tell when a person was about to die. When she wasn't in a fit of hysterics, she was murmuring about a blonde who was about to have her throat cut, or a man who had bumped into a passing by Avada Kedavra, or the occasional child and it's dog who crisped, helpless against a raging fire.

The most eerie experience, I think, was my first day there. It wasn't the fact that I was there at Mungo's, no, but rather, the fact that I was utterly surrounded by people; I hated the crowded atmosphere, the way they treated us patients like children, and as if we might explode any minute. Not only was I surrounded by people, but people who didn't, couldn't, and would never understand me. Actually, there was more than that to my sour attitude. One, my whispers had been silent ever since yesterday evening. Two...my reflection. It was the first time I looked at my reflection in a year or so. Amazingly enough, over my time of brooding in my house, I had stopped primping myself. I thought that my vanity was something I would always keep, and maybe I did still have it, but apparently, it had diminished greatly.

Upon walking into the bathroom, I almost fell over in shock, for staring back at me from the mirror was the most vacant, unfamiliar gaze I had ever seen. A pair of stormy, dark grey eyes looked out at me, not a glint of mirth shining from them. I had thinned, my facial structure almost skeletal, but not unhealthily so. My hair I had kept from growing long, but the lack of its usual swabbing of gel made my platinum wisps mussed, surrounding my head in a flurry of chaos. It increased my wild look.

However, as much as my unusual appearance frightened me, it pleased me as well. For even having been alone and half-crazy for years, I still managed to look good. I somehow still possessed the Malfoy aristocratic, elegant beauty and grace I had always been proud of. Drawing my fingers through my hair to calm it down a little, I gave a faint smile of satisfaction. Then, experimentally, I tried to bring back the haughty smirk that had frequently made its appearances in my years at Hogwarts. Gradually, slowly, that smirk eased its way and settled back on my lips. I laughed, and then immediately snapped my mouth shut, my hands at my throat.

My laugh. My voice! Utterly destroyed! I coughed, coughing although I didn't need to, trying to cough out the dry feeling that suddenly inflamed my throat. My voice was something I thought I would always have. It was something I'd taken for granted. But after so much time having passed of my being totally silent, my voice was croaky and horrid, including my laugh.

I cleared my throat several times, trying to make the hoarseness go away, humming and murmuring a babbling of words over and over, trying to make my voice work again. Finally, I stopped, gasping, and quickly rushed from the bathroom. After gulping down some water, I went back to sit on my usual chair. I sat there, thinking about the incident in the bathroom, wanting to try and speak, but at the same time, not wanting to. I would be revealing weakness if I tried to talk and had a hoarse voice. It was like showing my throat to the werewolf.

But I suddenly wanted so badly to speak. To feel human again; to be connected. I wanted to hear my voice, to have something from my past that wasn't abstract and dark like my memories, didn't haunt me. I looked up as I felt a pair of eyes on me. Somehow, I was always able to sense when someone was looking at me.

It was Katrina. Her eyes, a muddy green, stared back at me piercingly, her pupils dilating, irises sparkling. I shuddered. Only just minutes ago my own gaze had looked back at me. No one had looked at me in years. Finding eyes on me, and especially her eyes, was something I was uncertain could ever be a pleasant experience.

Giving me an eerie smile, she tilted her head, and chirped, "It chases you, doesn't it, Draco? You run from it. But of course you do; everyone runs from it. It wants to tear you apart, crunch on your bones, drink your blood, and that hair of yours...what a pretty silk quilt it would make...Raspberries, like green raspberries. I remember I had a bonnet once. It was red. But there is no silver lining in the dungeons."

I stared at her, blinking at the variety of topics she'd mentioned, and then dared to speak. I asked coolly, "What chases me?"

She nodded, giggling, as if happy that someone had actually replied. Then her voice lowered to a mournful, serious tone as she said, "But I lost my bonnet, Draco. It flew away in the wind! H-He stole it!" Then the woman burst into tears, sobbing and wailing loudly, her form hunched over pitifully in her chair. I felt no drop of sympathy, and instead only confusion, curiousity, and dissatisfaction.

Gaping, I fell back against the chair, now aware that I had been leaning forward, intrigued. What on earth was wrong with me? I groaned, covering my face with my hands. This was not the place for me. I wasn't like these people. I wasn't that insane. No. How could I degrade myself so? When had I stooped so low? And yet at the same time, I find this appealing, in its own unusual way. Much more exciting than brooding at home.

I looked up as I heard a growl, so ferocious and strange a sound I'd never heard. I looked up, to find Katrina looming over me, her lips curled back, teeth flashing at me menacingly. Her eyes, blazing with fury, her red hair, springing from her scalp in tussled ringlets, and her hands reaching, nails like miniature knives...Constantly being nearby a troubled soul had helped me find a bit of release from the catastrophe of my life; I suddenly felt happiness again. I hadn't been able to cut my wrists or any other part of my body since I came to Mungo's. The desire to watch the blood again had been pulsing through me furiously, since I had no whispers to distract me anymore. Katrina had helped me with this. She had entertained me, and somehow bonded with me. I felt like a connection had come between us.

But in that moment with her standing over me, the moment before she dived down and her teeth sunk mercilessly into my shoulder, I knew that she wanted to kill me. Later on, and even after I had recovered, I found myself not angry towards her though, somehow. I simply wondered why she had been overtaken with such anger, and what she had meant by her words earlier.

The questions floated over my head for a few days, but then I decided to confront her once and for all. Since she had bitten me and become less easy to control, they had relocated her lodgings to a small, isolated room at the end of a long, intimidating corridor. She had her own private space, unlike the rest of us, who had to share a room with at least one other person.

I shivered, wrapping my cloak tighter around me, my bare feet padding silently against the tile floor. The corridor to her lone door was gigantic. It reached up more than six feet high, and was about 12 feet wide. Totally unnecessary space, all wasted. All I walked past were doors. Doors, doors, doors, plain and pale orange, like peaches. I quickly pointed my chin downward, staring at my feet as they took each step, preferring that to the ongoing blur of closed doors, the entrances--not exits--to tiny prisons.

My feet were cold, but I was already too numb to notice. For only a ways in front of me was Katrina's door. It looked just like the rest. Average height and width, made of thick, tough metal. But this door was black. Never before had I viewed ebony as a threatening colour. It used to be almost the only colour in my wardrobe. But suddenly, faced with the anxiousness twisting in my stomach at the prospect of trying to have a civil conversation with a true, live madwoman, the black door seemed to reflect my pain, mocking.

The door, of course, was locked. From both inside and out. So knocking, even if it was my style to do so, which it wasn't, would not have worked. Luckily, I had thought up a plan beforehand. They didn't allow us to have wands here. Of course not! That would be ridiculously stupid. In my first few days at Mungo's, I had wondered constantly where they put all the wands they took from us patients. But after a while, it didn't matter to me anymore.

Hurriedly, wanting to go in, talk, and be back out in my chair before I was forced to go back to my room at midnight, I took out my lock pick. Yes, I was ashamed. Who would ever have thought that a Malfoy, a pure blood, would resort to Muggle activities to achieve something? And a lowly, thief-like thing to do, at that: lock picking. Taking out the safety pin I had snatched one day from the top of the lobby counter, I pulled it into a long, squiggly wire, and shoved it into the lock. I twisted it, but only a moment later it sizzled and hissed, turning red, and dropping into a drop of mush at my feet. I bit my lip; the magic had burned it, damnit!

Huffing angrily, I opened my mouth, and slid from a tooth of mine a nearly invisible cap. Then I touched it to my tongue, and as soon as the magical object contacted with my saliva, it turned into a Time Turner. Once I held the thing in my hands, I stared at it in wonder for a moment. Who would have ever thought that one of Uncle's inventions would have served of use? Lucky Voldemort realized Uncle was only hindering his dark work before the old wank lived to hear how one of his inventions helped me. I'm glad the shriveled Death eater kicked the bucket!

Moments later, after flipping the Time Turner, I found myself a little ways into the past. It was the day that Katrina had bitten me. They were just putting her into the room. Grinning, I slid in through the doorway just before the authorities slammed the door shut on the woman and I.

Taking from the inside of my sleeve a pen I had found broken in the trash bin and then repaired, I glanced around the room. The walls, as all other patients room walls, were pure boring white. The room, which was in truth small, seemed spacious, for the only thing occupying it was Katrina and her futon, which served as a bed, and, apparently, a table. The thing hovered a foot or two in the air, undaunted by the weight of the woman sprawled upon it. Not that she weighed that much; she was probably underweight, in fact.

Taking from my sleeve--my substitute pocket--a piece of paper, I proceeded to write messages, questions, on it, and then leave it on her bed. Being insane, I supposed Katrina didn't find it unusual that a piece of paper appeared and reappeared with questions for her written on it. I told her who I was, first, and when the paper came back, with a simple Ah, the chased one. Hello, on it, I found I suddenly couldn't think of what to say. I wrote down the first thing that popped into my head: Who stole your red bonnet?

It was almost like talking to my whispers, except I had grown to know them, and Katrina was a total stranger.

The one who disguises as pharaoh stole my bonnet. My poor bonnet! Here there was a tear drop on the paper. She must have been so frightened. I betrayed her.

I couldn't help it; my curiousity was piqued. Who is she? Who did you betray?

Why, my bonnet, of course. You silly thing, you. Your thoughts which confuse you confuse my words of confusion.

Now definitely confused, I groaned in annoyance, and wrote, Just tell me what it is that chases me, and then I won't bother you anymore. But I want it straight out,. No stories. No small talk.

You impatient little boy. You ask what chases you? Oh, you poor thing. You haven't figured it out yet, have you? Well, I'll give you a hint: it has to do with the person that is always in the back of your mind, yet you never dare to think about anymore, for fear that you will be swamped in the sorrow of memories again.

I sat there, silent, reading her answer over and over again. Who was she, this Katrina? Some sort of mind-reader? I knew vaguely what she was talking about, but it was so suppressed that my mind couldn't pinpoint it exactly at that moment. She gave me no chance to reply, scribbling hastily, Think about it. Just do that, promise me you will.

I promise I will,

That was the last I ever heard from her, for then there was the sound of whirring; someone was coming in the room, was in the process of unlocking the magical locks on the door. Scribbling a hasty Thanks for everything, Katrina. I hope you find that bonnet of yours, I flipped the Time Turner over, and left.

Back in the present, I took a deep breath, and slumped back in my chair. Now, it was time to think about everything she had said. After all, I had nothing else to do. I wasn't sure if I would ever have anything truly important and significant to do in my life again.