Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey

Chapter One: Solitude

June 8, 1998.

I turn to face myself, incomplete, seeing only the scattered remnants of a child. Memories come back to haunt me with a singular clarity of what once was and will never be again. I know, now, that there is no going back; there will be no last stand.

This is what it means to be broken...

He took in a deep breath and sighed, setting down both book and quill on the tiny, dusty bedside cabinet that stood beside the iron-sprung bed and mould-encrusted mattress. He stared intently at the stains that the ink had made on his fingertips, imagining it as a type of cancer, swelling and spreading, slowly breaking down his body until there was nothing left but bone.

He had spent the last month alone in this dark, dank, flea-infested rat-hole. He did not mind the seclusion as he had spent most of his childhood in solitude, surrounded by strangers. His self-imposed isolation was a matter of survival in his house - to open up oneself to another was to invite treachery and breed mistrust. His ability to distance himself from others had served him well in the past; however, when his alienation became enforced on a physical and not just a mental level, his instinct was to bolt, to panic like a caged animal.

Draco Malfoy had become a prisoner of war.

Like thieves in the night, the Order had come into his home and shackled and dragged him to his current abode of incarceration: a dingy hovel in Godric's Hollow. He had resisted the urge to curse and struggle against his captors. It would have been to no avail. They had arrested his parents the day before, and since his father could not stop them, how could he expect himself to? He had no power.

So in abject silence, he submitted; he simply surrendered. Gone was the fire, and absent was the hate. He felt hollow inside. Life no longer had any colour to it - it was all just various shades of grey.

He turned his head toward the small window beside his bed and tentatively reached out to touch it, watching as his fingers made prints on the condensation that had formed on the glass. Outside, the white fog was hanging thick and damp in the air, accentuating the seasonally abnormal cold. He took in another deep breath and removed his fingers from the windowsill. He glanced down at his hand, turning it over, noting the unnatural lines of dirt that had begun to form between the creases of his knuckles and underneath the nails.

He could measure the span of his life in the soft lines that indented his palms; however, time was no longer relevant to him. This day or that day had no value placed upon it, no importance. The only reason he knew to date his journal was because of a perennial sensation he felt not some three days past. His birthday had come and gone like the rising and setting of the sun: noticed, but rarely appreciated. He wondered, absently, if he had aged greatly in these last few weeks. He reached up to touch his face, searching now for lines on his smooth alabaster skin.

A black crow cawed outside, startling him from his ruminations. He lowered his hand, frowned, and then laid back down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. After a brief moment, the crowing finally subsided, and he was, once again, left to the quiet. They say silence has a way of becoming deafening if endured for too long. Deprived of human contact for little over a month, Draco had discovered that he had been living the life of a deaf man.

He glanced over at the locked door. He had no idea what time it was. It was hard to tell on grey, foggy days like these. He could only guess at generalities of morning, afternoon, evening, or night. He assumed that it was close to midday as his stomach was doing somersaults in anticipation of food.

He grimaced at his own predictable nature. He was Pavlov's dog in practice. He wondered why he had stomached it for so long, why he even had an appetite. He had attempted, in vain, to starve himself, refusing to eat for the first three days. However, hunger and desperation finally reared their ugly heads, and he gave in. Appetite and apathy took over, and he found no reason or cause for starving himself.

Right on cue, the makeshift tray door opened and a plate of food was hastily shoved inside his tiny cell. Just as quickly, the door snapped shut. He eyed the shapeless mass of 'sustenance' with a sense of hunger and revulsion.

He laced his fingers behind his head and resumed his staring competition with the ceiling. Whoever his jailer was, he would not give him the satisfaction of watching him scurry to the floor like some ravenous dog devouring the meagre meal provided. Broken and disillusioned as he might have believed himself to be, he still had self-respect.

He brought his head up and glanced over at the modest bookshelf at the end of the bed towards the back of the room. There were only a few books on the shelf, including the journal that he had begun to record his thoughts in. The journal, itself, had a worn leather cover, and the spine was well-broken in. After skimming the first few pages, he had noted, oddly, that there was no writing inside. Much like his life, it was unused but worn and old. He decided to claim the diary as his own, to maintain his sanity.

They say that the body cannot survive without the mind, but how long does it take to break a man? It had only been a month, but to Draco it had begun to feel like an eternity. Belligerent insanity was almost inevitable.

He scowled as he scanned the rest of his prison cell: a desk, a chair, a tiny wardrobe and small dresser, a mirror, and a sink and toilet. The room itself was dirty, cramped, and reeked of a notably pungent odour that he was, unfortunately, getting accustomed to. They had left him no means of entertainment: no music, no wand, no nothing.

What few books were there he had already read several times over. Most of them were old, second-hand text books from school; however, there were a few Muggle books: Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and Crime and Punishment. After a week, he broke down and read the latter. He found it to be not too bad, for a Muggle book. The first two appeared to be romance novels - not really his cup of tea. He leafed through the pages and found that he was not quite bored enough to begin reading them - perhaps in another month. Perhaps if his genitalia shrivelled up and turned inward then maybe he'd develop a predilection for that sort of genre.

He glanced over at the food and tried to mentally retrieve the tray. He, of course, could not use any magic in his personal prison. Potter still had his wand, and Draco found that he could not even perform the most mundane nonverbal spells. There was a great interlocking web of wards placed on his cell and even the grounds outside his residence of incarceration. The woven complexity of the barrier spells were beyond him and without a wand he could not begin to fathom a way to undo or counter them.

His mind briefly wandered to the image of his wand, and he thought back to the battle at Hogwarts. He mentally castigated himself on his ineptitude for both losing his wand and not capturing Potter himself when he had the chance. In the end, he supposed his conscience had given way in some form, allowing the scar-faced boy to have the upper hand.

He shook his head and scowled. He did not like to think back to his seventh year. He found it easier to force it to the back of his mind, repressing the memories that still shadowed his soul. The past was unimportant; what mattered was the present. Would he fit into this new order, this new regime? He doubted it. He and his family had backed the wrong horse. They were pariahs now: denizens without homes.

So what did the future hold in store for him? Would he be sent to Azkaban with his father, incarcerated with the rest of the Death Eaters and fellow miscreants, or would he be set free? Yet again, he didn't appear to care.

In this moment, all he sought was respite from the bitter and lonely isolation. He had survived much worse than this, he knew, but he was a stronger man then; he had hope. Now the pergolas of his impenetrable tower walls had come crashing down around him, leaving a wake of carnage and desolation in its path. What survived the wreckage to crawl out of the debris was an empty shell of a boy, who, above all else, longed only for a reprieve from the solitude.

~*~

Author notes: There is not an excessive amount of dialogue in the first few chapters of this story as it caters more to the internal as opposed to the external development of characters and plot. The chapters are relatively short and follow a journal-entry style for the first half, which I believe best evinces the ruminations of both Draco and Ginevra.

Books:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoyevsky