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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 7 months

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The Need of Malfoy Men to Please Their Fathers Was Not Only Pathological, It Was Magical

((Content warning: Child abuse, mind control / conditioning, chid whumpee, domination ))

((Promptspiration: @week-of-whump 2023: October 13: Child Whump

the idea of this Au backstory is @thebestieyoureinlovewith's (here) With apologies; I think I made the parents a little darker than intended...))

Whumpee: Draco

Whumper: Lucius

Caretaker: --

Whump type: Mental / Domination

Fic type: Weird AU (Malfoy Blood Magic)

((words: ~1000))

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Narcissa dragged the crying, uncooperative boy into the study by the arm, tugging firmly when he squirmed yet again and redoubled his sobbing, digging in his feet on the carpet.

"Lucius, if you're going to punish him," she gritted out between her teeth, "you deal with it."

Lucius glanced up mildly from his papers. "Just leave him in his room."

"If that worked, I would have done it," she snapped. "It has been three hours. Either let him go or keep him yourself." She pushed Draco up beside the desk. He squirmed in her hands to try to turn away, but she held him firmly.

The look he gave her was indulgent; he didn't think this was necessary, but if she was demanding it... He turned toward the end of the desk and crossed his legs. "Draco."

Draco faced him with his head hanging, refusing to look, clumsy hands clutching and yanking at the front of his shirt, still sobbing. There were no actual tears, of course; he'd been 'crying' so long that he'd used them all up, and left just the emotion and the noise.

"Draco," he repeated severely, and the boy squirmed his face away into his shoulder. "Why are you crying?"

He yanked hard on his clothes. "It hurts!" he yelled.

"No, it doesn't," he corrected patiently. The boy didn't really have the words; he wasn't quite four, so it was reasonable, he supposed. A little disappointing, though. "It feels bad. That isn't pain."

"No! It hurts!"

"Are you talking back to me?"

Draco flinched and sobbed harder.

Lucius tapped his foot lightly. Draco squirmed to resist and when he figured out he couldn't, that his mother was still blocking him from running away, he flung himself down on the floor at his father's feet with a petulant sob.

"Why does it feel bad?"

"Because you're mad at me!" he wailed. Above him, Narcissa pressed her eyes closed and took a deep, sharp breath, rubbing her temple.

"No, I am not," he corrected calmly. "If I were angry with you, it would be pain." Not intentionally, of course; it wasn't as though he would be, say, Crucioing him. But the magic that bound them together responded to emotion. "I am disappointed."

"I'm sorry!"

"Don't beg," he said coolly. "You are a Malfoy." His disapproval naturally heightened the unpleasant feeling playing through Draco's nerves, and the boy shrieked and kicked at the floor.

"Lucius," Narcissa said tightly. "This is unbearable. You should have either activated this curse years ago, or waited until he was old enough to be reasonable."

"It isn't a curse," he said mildly.

"It is a curse to me," she snapped. "This is not 'handling it'."

"You have to be patient. It is a process. Draco." The boy flinched at the sound of his name, and he didn't care for that. "Look at me."

Draco shook his head wildly. Lucius patiently put his foot out to stop the motion of his head, then when he got him still, laid his toe under his chin and turned his face up to make him look. "Good," he said, the mildest of praise. "That feels better, doesn't it?"

"No," he sniffled petulantly.

"Yes, it does," he corrected. He knew it did; Draco was hardly the first Malfoy boy to be bound by this spell. It had existed in their family so long it wasn't even really a spell, per se, but some of that 'old magic' that seemed built into the fabric of the world. He knew exactly how Draco felt. But Draco was such a stubborn and wildly emotional child who seemed to revel in his sulking, he wouldn't even admit to relief. "Do you know why it feels better?"

"No..."

"Because you did as I said. Do you understand?"

Draco sniffled without responding.

"Do something I don't like..." he prompted.

He squirmed and tried to take his head back, but Lucius kept his foot under his jaw so he couldn't. "It feels bad," Draco finally said in a small voice.

"Good. And to feel better..."

"Do as you say..."

"Correct." He took his foot back. "If you ever manage to please me, it will feel good." It wasn't easy to obtain, but the feel of your father's pride was intoxicating. They'd see if Draco ever managed it.

Draco sat down firmly on his butt and sniffled again.

Lucius tapped the floor with his foot again for his attention. "What do I want you to do?"

"I don't know," he sniffled petulantly.

"I told you."

"I don't know!"

Well, he was young. He supposed he couldn't hold too many things in his mind for that long. "I want you to thank me properly."

It was a classic test. Moreover, it was a highly effective trial, for them. Malfoy boys were so proud -- as they should be, of course -- that they had to really commit to do any such thing. It helped them understand their place, and effectively demonstrated the possible rewards for doing what their father wanted instead of what their instincts were telling them.

Draco yanked at his shirt again, looking up at him with big, wet eyes.

"Say 'thank you'."

"Thank you..." Draco echoed.

"'Sir'."

"Sir." He tapped his foot on the carpet, and Draco looked at it, then back up at him. "Thank you, sir?" he repeated tenatively.

He didn't need to smile at that; the way Draco gasped when the unpleasant feeling abruptly transmuted to a good, warming tingle that couldn't properly be described said it all. The sobbing and sniffling stopped as suddenly as if they were an act he forgot he was putting on.

He was actually surprised, himself, at how satisfying it felt to be on the receiving end of that submission. He wondered for the first time if perhaps the ancient magic went both ways.

"Finally," Narcissa sighed. "I am going to have a nap. Don't make him cry again if you can help it."

"I doubt you have to worry." He turned back to his desk, and glanced down at Draco. He was looking up at him now with a sort of wonder. "You can stay," he said magnanimously.

#whump week #child whumpee #draco whumpee #lucius whumper #magical whump #domination whump #conditioning whump #whump writing #weird au #malfoy blood magic au #whump #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 5 months

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Winter Whumperland 3

((content warnings: homophobia))

promptspiration: @amonthofwhump Winter Whumperland Day 3: Disowned

Whumper: parents Whumpee: Draco Malfoy whump type: angst fic type: post-Hogwarts AU

words: ~1000

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Once upon a time, Death Eaters had been Draco's biggest problem.

He supposed, in a way, they still were. He wouldn't have this problem right now if Bellatrix and the Dark Lord hadn't been rifling through his mind, taking whatever they wanted and using it against him.

During Occlumency training, Bellatrix had figured out that, inasmuch as he had any interest for anybody in that kind of way, which frankly wasn't all that much, it was for other wizards, not witches like he was supposed to. She more or less kept it to herself for that year, but as soon as he failed to kill Dumbledore, once it was clear that he was disgraced and fair game, it was open season on all his secrets and insecurities, and everyone knew.

The Death Eaters called him a girl, called him a fairy — those pretty but vain and useless little creatures, good for nothing but decoration. It was a lot to constantly be hearing, but it was… whatever, Death Eaters were awful, it was nothing new. He could live with it.

But it didn't end when the Death Eaters were gone, because his parents knew. And he couldn't deny it.

And now he was sitting on a bench in the Hogsmeade garden, looking at the valley, literally without a knut to his name.

His thumb ran over his bare finger. That motion would normally be spinning around the signet ring he'd worn since he was thirteen; he hadn't even realised how often he did that until it became this constant reminder that he didn't have it anymore. He looked down at his hand, then crossed his arms to try to stop himself from doing that.

His father wasn't really the problem… He was a problem, but they could have worked something out. His father was mostly concerned with not having the family embarrassed, and having an heir. As long as he kept up appearances, it could have worked. His father wouldn't have respected him, but… he was used to that.

But his mother… that look of utter disgust…

He roughly wiped his cheek to pretend there was nothing there and tried not to remember it.

He had more pressing problems, and he tried to focus on those. Like where he was going to sleep, for one. Or how he was going to eat. Magic could do a lot; if he absolutely had to, he supposed he could go transfigure himself a shelter out of a tree, as vile as that sounded. But it couldn't make food that would keep a person alive.

If he had even one person he could go to…

But he didn't. Snape was… gone. Crabbe was dead and Goyle was in prison. Pansy hadn't had a kind word for him since Dumbledore died, and Theo literally hadn't spoken to him since that time. He didn't have any extended family closer than about fourth cousins, and at that point you could just show up at any Pureblood family's house and claim relation, and that wasn't going to get him anywhere. He didn't even have a loyal house elf. It was just him.

Society wouldn't want anything to do with him. He was a disgraced Death Eater, pardoned but not forgiven. He had only to see the way people looked at him to know that. The most charitable expression he got from anyone was pity, and that was almost as bad as the disdain. He couldn't look for any help or charity — again, as vile as that sounded — or even a break. There were no opportunities for him unless he found a way to make one.

He'd have to find work, but… he didn't know how. He'd never thought about it. No one with his surname had been employed in over five hundred years, and even then, it was by choice. He'd put no thought into it in school; school for him was meant to be a place to make connections, and that clearly hadn't worked out. He didn't even have the exam scores to go look for decent jobs cold; he hadn't gotten his N.E.W.T.s, more occupied with trials and Death Eaters after the Battle at Hogwarts. And honestly… he probably wouldn't have gotten any if he'd sat the exams. He'd stopped caring about schoolwork the moment his father was arrested and 'real life' began. He'd dropped most of his electives so he could focus on trying to kill Dumbledore, done the minimum for work, and even entirely stopped attending the classes he could get away with in seventh year, while the school was occupied. It was too late in the year to try to register to go back for another year to get them… and even if he could, he wasn't sure he could tolerate another year trapped in that school, where everyone hated him and everything had been terrible for years. And he didn't think they'd allow him back anyway.

He could see the school from where he sat, on the other side of the lake, looming over the valley. It only looked forbidding.

His finger tried turning his ring again, and he closed his eyes.

This was too much. Everywhere he turned was another wall turning him away. If he just had one opening, one chance… But no, it was all just piling on top of him. He couldn't handle it all. He wished he had some Draught of the Living Death so he could just sleep and it wouldn't matter anymore.

He wished there was a spell to fix himself. Make him right, so he could go home, and his mother wouldn't look at him that way…

--tbc?--

#whump writing #winter whumperland #amow winter whumperland 2023 #day3 #disowned #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 7 months

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Teaching Moment

((Content warning: Beating, Control / Forced violence))

((Promptspiration: @week-of-whump 2023: October 11: Reluctant Whumper / "Hit them harder." ))

Whumpee: Draco // Lucius

Whumper: Lucius // Voldemort

Caretaker: --

Whump type: Beating / Domination / Psychological

Fic type: "Prisoners in Malfoy Manor" alternate history

((words: ~1600))

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"It seems the boy doesn't learn. Lucius?"

There was a sensation of laughter around the table of Death Eaters, although nothing quite audible, more of a smirk hanging in the air. Silently, he pushed himself to his feet. He saw Draco clench his jaw, but he didn't try to argue his way out of it. Maybe he actually was learning.

He quietly held out his hand for Narcissa's wand. She was resistant; she didn't want to contribute to Draco's torture. He couldn't blame her, but they both knew he had no choice. If he didn't, someone else would do something much worse. She did finally pull her wand from her sleeve after a delay that, hopefully, the others around the table didn't notice.

Their master interrupted. "That won't be necessary, Lucius."

He stopped with his hand just on her wand and looked up. "My lord...?"

"You won't need that." He tilted his head slightly toward the wand. "Punish him."

Lucius went still. Punish him. He meant 'hit him'.

"You're familiar, aren't you?" His voice was coldly amused. Privately amused; the Dark Lord and Narcissa were the only ones in the room who knew exactly how familiar he was with the concept. "Or do you need a reminder? Mulciber?" He glanced down the table toward their smirking Imperius specialist.

...It would be easier to be Imperiused. He wouldn't have to know what he was doing. Maybe he should let them...

But Mulciber had been a sadist with the Imperius even before he went to Azkaban for fifteen years; his creative tortures were what he was known for during the first war. Now, after giving Dementors fifteen years of his life, he was broken in some way, little more now than a vehicle for sadism. There was no telling what he might make him do if he had him under his control.

"No," he said, and stepped around the table.

Draco was controlling his reactions, but had still developed a little frown between his brows. He was an admittedly-spoiled boy from a good Pureblood family, sheltered and insulated from the dirty realities of a rougher life. He had seen and experienced terrible, bloody, even unforgivable curses... but physical violence? Even when he saw it, it was something that belonged to the Muggles and the brutes, not their kind. It was so far outside his reality he couldn't even comprehend. He didn't even really understand to be afraid.

Lucius wished that didn't have to change.

He stepped in front of Draco. Draco took a subtle breath and lifted his chin, trying to say he was ready. He didn't realise this would be easier for him if he didn't try to be strong.

He backhanded Draco across the face without giving him any more time to prepare.

Draco gasped sharply and held his face, turned away, while the others in the room cheered or jeered. Someone hooted, but Bellatrix called out "Weak!"

In a second, Draco recovered his wits and stood straight again; he sought his eyes again, but this time he seemed uncertain, seeking reassurance he only wished he could provide. There was a smear of blood and an uneven scratch on Draco's cheekbone; it seemed his ring, the same signet ring Draco wore, had caught into his cheek and cut him. It was unintentional, but maybe that blood would satisfy them...

"Well?" The Dark Lord behind him sounded almost bored.

Of course. Because he didn't mean 'hit him'. He meant 'hit him until I tell you to stop'.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, turning his ring around to face his palm in the only act of mercy he could provide.

It had to be real; there were enough of them there that would know if it were not. So he didn't hold back, much, when he punched Draco in the stomach. He caught him by the shoulder when he doubled over, wheezing, forced him back up and held him in place so he could punch him in the face. Now the Death Eaters were entertained.

It wasn't a fair contest. Even if Draco were fighting back -- even if Draco knew how to fight back -- he was smaller, weaker, softer. He might not be a child anymore, but he wasn't a man, either; he was just a boy taking his first exploratory steps into a life of violence he thought he wanted, without a real appreciation of what it meant. Stress had made him sickly, and, if it could be said Azkaban had done the same to his father, well, they hadn't been starting from the same place.

Draco twisted out of his hand, backing away a step, holding his stomach and ducking his head, trying to catch his breath. He kept one arm raised defensively, like he could hide behind it. Apparently they had already found the limit of his resolve.

"I get it," Draco panted. "I won't do it again." Behind them, one of the Lestranges laughed something about his endurance, and Draco flushed, but didn't look.

"What do you think, Lucius?" the Dark Lord asked languidly. "Has he learned his lesson?"

He watched Draco expressionlessly; Draco was looking at him furtively, like he didn't want to be seen watching. "I believe so, my lord," he said evenly.

"Do you?" He knew by the amused tone that that was the wrong answer. "I doubt it."

He didn't have to be directed to carry on. And Draco was smart enough to understand it. He stepped up to grab him, and Draco automatically tried to step back out of his reach, but he wasn't quick enough. He grabbed his arm and yanked him back into his fist. He tried to avoid his face, but when Draco doubled over to protect his ribs he didn't have much choice.

Their audience laughed and cheered. "Maybe the old Lucius is still in there," Rabastan commented. "Underneath all that domestication."

Draco managed to pull away from him, sporting a split lip and a livid red mark over the side of his face that would bruise spectacularly. "Stop!" he snapped, backing away, because his instinct when he couldn't handle something was to try to give orders. That was a bad instinct here.

His walking stick was flicked to him; he caught it by instinct, and then he stared at it in his hand. And so it was -- the transformation was complete. If he followed through with this silent command, the Dark Lord had fully turned him into his father.

Draco shook his head, pulling away. "Don't..." he begged quietly.

He would give anything to have a choice.

There was the slightest tremble in his hand holding the stick, until he willed it away. He had to focus not on that he couldn't be doing this, but that he must.

He brought the cane down across his ribs. Draco didn't have the experience or the instincts to properly protect himself; he kept leaving himself open, exposing vulnerable points that must occasionally be exploited. Finally, Draco fell to his knees and half sprawled on the floor under a final blow that clipped him in the side of the head.

Stay down, he pleaded mentally. Stay down and let this be over.

But he didn't. Draco slowly pushed himself up on his arms, breath shaking and keeping his face down, but still trying. He was too stubborn.

Or too dutiful... He thought that getting up again was what was expected of him. A strangling hand clenched around Lucius' heart.

The only thing he could think to do to keep him down, he stepped firmly on his hand, and at Draco's pained hiss, he brought the stick down across his side and back again. There was a wet crunch he felt more than heard; it had happened too quickly, he didn't know if it was his hand or his arm, but something had broken.

With a cry, Draco bowed tightly over his hand toward the floor, shielding his head, no longer trying.

The stick came down on the exposed back of his neck, for good measure.

"That will do, Lucius," the Dark Lord interrupted, tone light and amused. "We can't have you killing the boy." Bellatrix tittered amongst the other amused reactions; that sound in particular grated.

"As you wish, my lord." His voice sounded empty to his own ears. He stepped back. Draco didn't move. He was huddled on the floor, hiding his head, trying to be a small target -- he was learning after all. A few drops of blood were appearing on the floor in front of him.

There was no consideration of helping him, even to stand. Any hint of kindness toward his son would be weakness for them to exploit. Any, any emotion would give them a way in. He couldn't give them that. He couldn't show anything. All of the hatred, the rage, the dark memories, the disgust and shame and fear and looming despair that turned his blood to ice, he methodically isolated and packed away into a small corner of his mind where even the Dark Lord would have to try to find it, where he could hold it at bay and focus. Where they could not make his hands shake or make him sick or make him hit something far more deserving.

If they could be convinced that he did not care, they would have no reason to do it again.

Calling on thirty years of Occlumency and forty years of self-restraint, he calmly wiped blood from the serpent-handle of the cane and his ring which had worked its way back around at some point, and turned away from Draco.

His hands ached.

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 5 months

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Whumpcember 2023 Masterlist

Since my Whumpcember entries are all part of one long fic, I thought it would be useful to make a masterlist to link at the beginning of each post.

The prompts are used in specific scenes, in order. I'm only posting the specific scenes on tumblr, but the AO3 story will have a lot of connective tissue that's missing, as well as NSFWhump (none of which will be integral to the Whumpcember prompts).

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Several years post-War, Draco is found wandering, incoherent, and ill, in the aftermath of an extended bout of the Imperius curse. Harry Potter brings him into his home to protect him while the rest of the world thinks he's dead.

"Saviour" is a slow-burn abuse fic with a whumpee who does not even realise that he's a prisoner.

Whumpee: Draco Malfoy Whumper / Caretaker: Harry Potter Pairing: Harry / Draco Genre: "Comfort/Hurt", as in, it starts comforting and gentle, and the violence grows. Looks primarily, at least at the start, like sick fic / hurt/comfort, with some more angsty entries.

-----

"Dead Dove" content warning applies for permanent injury, brain injury, gaslighting, and coerced relationship. Gore is rare but possibly intense.

Links to daily entries below:

Day 1: Fever -- fever delirium / incapacitation

Day 2: Sickness -- nausea, hunger, dizziness, vomit (minor), amnesia, mind control aftermath, hurting loved ones under mind control, gaslighting?, nonconsensual casual touching, crush confession

Day 3: Hypothermia -- hypothermia, depression, parent death

Day 4: Hidden Injury -- amputation, depression, parent death

(there is a full chapter of context missing on tumblr between days 4 and 5, but is on AO3)

Day 5: Impaled -- impalement, gore, blood, vomiting blood, painful medical treatment

Day 6: Nightmares -- amputation (dream), blood (dream), murder (dream), parent death, hurting loved ones while under mind control, self loathing, emotional manipulation

Day 7: Fainting -- head trauma, brain damage, blood, beating?, domestic violence?, gaslighting?, unreality

Day 8: Isolation -- isolation, depression, parent death (mentioned)

Day 9: Brainwashing -- verbal abuse, domestic abuse

Day 10: Freezing -- coughing blood, ignoring boundaries / pressure / dubious consent (touching), flashbacks / freezing fear response, sedation

Day 11: Infection -- coughing blood, illness / fever, domestic abuse, violence, silent treatment, imprisonment, abusively depriving a disabled person of their accessibility aids

Day 12: Touch Starved -- silent treatment, abandonment, isolation, emotional manipulation, coerced / dubious consent relationship

(there are 3 chapters of content between days 12 and 13, Clearly at this point you no longer get the whole story just by reading the prompts.)

Day 13: Restraints -- fear / panic attack / flashback

Day 14: Cornered -- beating / domestic abuse

(there are about 3 chapters between days 14 and 15)

Day 15: Hallucinating -- hallucinations, unreality, not being believed, stalker, physical torture

Day 16: Head Injury -- obsession, stalker, gaslighting, memory alteration, seizure

(there are 4 chapters between days 16 and 17)

Day 17: Fire -- turned out too Mature to post (sexual content aftermath)

Day 18: Chronic Pain -- physical pain

Day 19: Exhaustion -- suicidal despair, chronic pain

Day 20: Drugged

Day 21: Choking

Day 22: Seizures

Day 23: Nosebleed

Day 24: Bullet

Day 25: Coma

Day 26: Collapse

Day 27: Bleeding Out

Day 28: Abandoned

Day 29: Paralyzed

Day 30: Delirium

Day 31: Homeless

#whumpcember2023 #whump writing #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #draco x harry #harry potter #harry potter fanfiction #draco whumpee #carewhumepr #harry whumper #harry caretaker #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 5 months

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((contents: kidnapping, captivity, buried alive, isolation, hallucinations, left to die))

Promptspiration: This week's post result fic, from the "When Caretaker finally finds Whumpee..." poll, and the result "having given up / despairing". combined with @whumpers-monthly prompt this month: "locked in a coffin".

Whumpee: Draco Whumper: randos Caretaker: Lucius Fic type: post-Hogwarts

Draco is buried alive by some of Lucius' unsavoury associates.

((words: ~2200))

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Another bout of unpleasant side-along Apparition, and then Draco was shoved into another man's hands and yanked around. The wizards around him were speaking an Eastern European language, Romanian or Belarusan or something, and they manhandled him around physically instead of trying to instruct him. None of them had answered of his questions or demands with anything but blows, and he had gotten the message quickly and shut up.

Pairs of hands seized both of his arms, holding him between at least two of them. Someone ripped the dark hood off his head, and he winced away from the glaring white light of a wand that was in his eyes.

"The Malfoy boy," a heavily accented voice said, the first English he had heard since he was grabbed, and he squinted into the light to see an unfamiliar wizard with heavy eyes. "Your father is Lucius Malfoy, yes?"

He wasn't a 'boy', he was nineteen, but it seemed he was doomed to be seen that way by his father's associates forever. "It looks like you already know the answer." He jerked against the hands of the wizards holding him. They didn't even come close to letting go. "What do you want?"

"From you?" The speaker shrugged. "Nothing. But your father, he owes us a service he has failed to deliver. Perhaps he can use an incentive, no?" He stepped back, turning away, and gestured with the wand.

Now that the light was further from his face, Draco could see something of the empty field they were standing in, and the huge amount of dirt piled up beside a dark, hard-edged gash in the ground. There was a rough wooden box leaning against the pile of dirt, a six foot long box standing open, and for a long moment his mind refused to see it for what it was.

The men holding his arms started pushing him toward the hole, and he resisted just out of instinct, forcing them to drag him along. And then, when he recognised that they were pulling him toward the box, and that it wasn't a box, it was a coffin, he started struggling wildly. "No!" He pulled against their arms, digging his heels into the thick grass. "Don't! He'll do it! He'll do whatever you want, just don't—!"

One of them grabbed him by the back of the neck in a painful grip that forced his shoulders to hunch, and they yanked his arms up so that he could only twist wildly and futilely against them. His flailing kicks made contact with one of their legs and they lifted him up off his feet, and slammed him into the coffin. His face slammed into the rough wood of the back of it, and he shoved back, twisting around to make a last desperate bid for freedom. He managed to face front, but they shoved him back and closed the lid on him while he screamed for them to let him out and slammed his hands against it.

There was more discourse in their language outside. He threw himself forward, trying to break out. The coffin wasn't well-constructed and slivers of white wandlight fell between the planks, enough to see his hands, enough to see how tight the space was. Rough boards pressed against him on all sides, inches from his shoulders, inches from his face. "Let me free!" he screamed again desperately.

The coffin moved, jostling him with sharp, careless movements, and he slammed against the sides and front of the box with cries of pain and shock. Then there was a loud thud as the box landed hard, and he landed hard inside it, on his back, thrown up so the top of his head hit the top wall of the coffin.

There was a loose thump on top of the coffin, and he shoved against the lid, yelling for them to let him out. Dirt sifted into the coffin through the gaps between the boards, falling on his face and making him sputter and frantically wipe his eyes and mouth clean, his knuckles and the edges of his hands bumping up against the inside of the lid. The thumps slowly covered the lid of the box with dirt, blocking out the thin shafts of light that were all there was left of the outside as he screamed.

The darkness was absolute. Darker than night, darker than the dungeons, as dark as being blind.

He had to stop screaming because he was running out of breath and it was making him panic; one solid bout of pounding and kicking at the coffin sent a curtain of dirt falling in on his face, and he was briefly terrified that it was going to keep coming and suffocate him. He covered his head with his hands, arms pressed up against the lid of the coffin.

It stopped in a minute, and he cleaned off his face as much as possible, coughing, and made himself hold still. His muscles were trembling. He had to take stock of his situation. He had to calm down.

Testing the space by stretching out his toes, he touched the bottom, and accidentally shoved his head against the top again. It was only maybe two inches longer than he was tall. There was barely space for him to move his hands, four or five inches, maybe, between his chest and the wood above him. Moving his elbows, he hit the wood on both sides within inches. He was lucky he was not large in any dimension but height; he would not have been able to move at all if he were muscular or even remotely fat. As it was, he could barely draw up a leg to push against the lid with his knee, unable to get any purchase with his feet, and his hands could either rest on his chest or at his sides, nothing else. Only his head could move freely.

He tried breathing deeply, focusing on control, on separating himself from his emotions. But fear was always the emotion he couldn't compartmentalise away, since he was a child. Fear always won. He couldn't let it now.

He couldn't think about it. He couldn't not think about it, but he couldn't allow himself to think about it, because there was no path forward for him, and that was terrifying. Nothing he could do, there was nothing he could do to help himself, he was trapped…

He thought about it, and it won. He was trapped. His breath hitched, his control slipped, and then he was screaming again, screaming for help, for his captors to come back, for someone to save him. He beat his hands and knees against the coffin lid until they hurt and dirt was sifting down on him again, and when his throat was too raw to continue screaming, he sobbed.

Exhaustion was his only respite from the terror; nothing changed except that he was tired and sore along with being trapped, and he held his hands on his chest, trying to get warm, trying to catch his breath, trying to stop crying.

He had no way of knowing how long it had been, or how long it would be. Maybe it was almost over. Maybe his father would be here soon…

—-

His father didn't come.

He didn't know if time passed, or if it was drawing out forever. Maybe it had only been an hour. Maybe no time had passed at all…

Maybe this would be like this forever.

He screamed. He cried. He tried to calm down. He failed in his control and panicked, beat and clawed at the coffin until he smelled blood and his hands were in agony and he was just sobbing helplessly, knowing he was going to die if someone didn't help him, and no one was there.

—-

He drifted. He didn't know if he was awake or asleep, the darkness was the same. Everything hurt, but at a numb remove. He thought he called out, but he didn't know if he did or if it was in his mind. Once he heard Voldemort's cold voice mocking him in the darkness and it made him scream and hit his head hard against the inside of the coffin lid.

Occasionally, he thought he heard something else, the thumping of digging above him or the call of a voice far away, beyond the dirt. Every time, it turned out to be a dream or his imagination or a hallucination.

And still, every time, he tore at the coffin and yelled for their help, and every time when he was worn out he stopped and held his breath, waiting for it to come again, and it never did.

There was only the nothingness.

—-

"Mother… Mother, make him let me out… Mother, please…" Tears trickled over his temples, into his ears. "Mother…"

—-

'Why did you let them take you?' his father demanded.

"I'm sorry…"

'All you had to do was kill them. I suppose it was expecting a bit much with Dumbledore, but it's not even someone you knew this time — you can't even kill a few petty gangsters? How did you get so weak?'

"I'm sorry…"

'Do you even care how much trouble you're causing me?'

"I'm sorry… please…"

'And now you're expecting me to fix it for you. Like always. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble.'

"Please come get me…" he whispered.

—-

No one was coming.

If his father were coming, he would have already been there. If it were possible for him to do what they demanded to free him, it would already have been done. He had failed, been killed or arrested. Or not tried…

…Or they had never intended to let him go, even if his father complied. The grave they had dug, it wasn't just a hole, it was so deep. Deep enough to ensure his body was never found. They had always meant to leave him to die, he realised, no matter what his father did. A strangled sob rose in his swollen throat, and he hit the side of his agonised hand against the lid of the coffin a final time.

"I don't want to die," he whispered, a broken sound that fell flat and faded away in the darkness like it had never existed.

Because he didn't have a choice.

He had never had a choice.

All the fighting, the struggling, the pleading, the trying, it had never been any use. No one would ever know and it was going to end the same. An unnamed body in an unmarked grave in an unknown countryside.

He was never going to see home again. The phantom images of white peacocks and the sound of fountains and the smell of flowers flickered so easily across his starving mind, and they wrenched another sob from his parched throat. He just wanted it more than anything, and all he was going to have for the rest of his life was the cold hard darkness.

He was never going to see his mother again…

His hands settled painfully on his chest, and he cried quietly in the dark, thinking of her and trying to find a way to let her go.

He knew he had to die, he just wished he had been able to say goodbye…

—----

Lucius ripped the lid from the coffin with the urgency of barely-controlled panic. "Draco…" The word came out in a quiet breath, not a yell. His heart had jumped into his throat and blocked it.

Draco was lying in the coffin, limp, grey-skinned, smeared with blood and caked with the dirt of the grave, cut through with clean tear-tracks that wound down into his hair. His lips were pale and cracked. The blood-stained rips on the knees of his trousers, the misshapen bruises of a fractured hand under bloody scrapes, the broken and missing fingernails, the splinters embedded in the tips of his raw fingers — all stood in mute testament to his desperate fight to survive.

And it didn't look like he was breathing. He was sick with himself. Draco had tried so hard, and he had failed him. He was too late.

"Draco…" There was ice in the pit of his stomach, but he had to know. He set his hand on Draco's cheek and turned his head on a limp neck, trying to get him to acknowledge him. Trying to will him to be alive. "Draco, I'm here."

And then, incredibly, Draco's eyes did open, a vague gaze that took a long second to focus on him, but alive. After all that, alive.

"You came…" he whispered, a barely audible cracked breath. He tried to move his hand, to touch him, perhaps to make sure he was real, but he couldn't; more than the damage to his hands, it clearly pained him to move at all, from the locked muscles and the pressure blisters of his thin frame forced into one position for three days.

"I did." Lucius gently lifted him to sit up and held him against his shoulder, cradling the back of his head. "Of course I did."

#whump writing #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #whumpers-monthly #issue no 22 #locked in a coffin #draco whumpee #draco malfoy whump #harry potter fanfiction #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 7 months

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Home from Azkaban

((Content warning: --))

((Promptspiration: @week-of-whump 2023: October 12: Neglect / "You look awful." ))

Whumpee: Lucius

Whumper: Azkaban

Caretaker: Narcissa

Whump type: Imprisonment -> Recovery

Fic type: Canon Compliant

((warning: this is kind of "I wouldn't normally post this in this state" quality, big First Draft energy, but I am trying to actually post things for Whump Week :B ))

((words: ~750))

------------------------------------

When Lucius arrived home in the midst of the Azkaban prisoners, he was a shell of himself. Narcissa could hardly see the other Death Eaters for the scream of his sunken eyes and unkempt hair. She immediately took hold of his arm and led him upstairs, closing them in their rooms. She cared not one whit for the rest of them -- let Bellatrix have the entire manor, as far as she was concerned, and play the little hostess.

The elf had already prepared a bath, and Lucius mutely followed her there. He put up no resistance but only provided minimal assistance as she helped him undress. The prison uniform would be burned with great pleasure, when there was time for it.

Her anger grew as his body was exposed; no Auror, Wizengamot judge, or Ministry official would have been safe in the room with her when she saw what they had done to him. Her beautiful husband had wasted away, leaving him stretched and sunken. She could count his ribs; his spine jutted out sharply. There were small, raw sores on one side of his arm and leg that showed where he had not moved for long stretches of time.

But he was not as filthy as he should be, after a year. He had not grown a beard past the week's worth of stubble that would have come in between his arrest and completely perfunctory trial. She had no illusions that those imprisoned in Azkaban were given the opportunity or means to bathe and groom themselves -- no, the incarceration procedure must include some basic hygiene enchantments, the better for them to be thrown away and ignored, forgotten like human refuse.

Lucius Malfoy was not garbage.

She helped him into the water; he hissed quietly at the unaccustomed warmth, and then began to relax. She sat beside the bath and drew her wand to cast basic healing charms over him, erasing the blemishes from his skin, then moved on to attending his dirty, ragged fingernails.

When she looked up, he was staring at her -- but he was staring at her, not just staring. It seemed like he was seeing her for the first time. His grey eyes traveled slowly over her face, then he lifted his hand and tentatively touched her, leaving a line of warm water across her cheek with his thumb. She reached up and held his hand silently against her cheek.

In a moment, she squeezed his hand and stood up, stepping behind him to begin brushing out his hair.

It took time. His normally silky hair was dry and tangled, but she patiently worked out knots. Perhaps it would have been easier to cut it, perhaps he wouldn't even have cared right now, but she refused to entertain the idea. She would not allow this to change him, to steal his pride from him.

People thought that Lucius was soft, or weak, because he was genteel -- because he had manners, and refined sensibilities, and money. Yet, he had survived. A weak man would have died in a year spent under the Dementors, or lost his mind, and Lucius had held on. He had the strength to come back to her. He would come back.

He was moving of his own accord now; he washed his face and took a shuddering breath, and then he slowly went on to make sure he was clean.

When she was finished, the bath was getting cool. She gave his hair a final brush over and helped him out, and then into the clothes that had been laid out for him.

She moved them in front of the mirror to look at him, and moreover so that he could see himself, and see that he was himself. She could do nothing for the dark pits around his eyes and the lines of his face sharper than they had been, and she didn't know men's shaving enchantments so he would have to sort that himself in time, but even so, the change was night and day. Clean and tidy, with his neat suit and his hair falling just so as it should, he was suddenly Lucius Malfoy again, not the nameless Azkaban inmate who had been discarded in the darkness.

He did look at himself at first, taking it in, but his eyes fell ever back to her. In a few moments, he put his arm around her and lowered his face into her shoulder. "I nearly forgot you." His voice was raw and hoarse.

She ran her hand over his hair. "You were not forgotten."

#whump week #lucius whumpee #narcissa caretaker #canon compliant #whump aftermath #whump recovery #azkaban whump #lucius malfoy #narcissa malfoy #whump writing #whump #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #i mean honestly it probably would have been good to try talking to him a lot sooner?#but you know... malfoys #this needs revision #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 5 months

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Winter Whumperland 4

((content warnings: kidnapping, captivity))

promptspiration: @amonthofwhump Winter Whumperland Day 4: Yandere Whumper

Whumper: Theo Nott Whumpee: Draco Malfoy Pairings: wannabe Theo / Draco whump type: captivity fic type: seventh-year AU

words: ~1500

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The ceiling Draco saw when he opened his eyes was bare rafters with scraps of cobwebs and a thin layer of dust. He immediately didn't like it. "The hell…?" He sat up to try to figure out where the hell he was.

There was a smiling face way too close to him, and he scrambled back with a start, sliding in unfamiliar bedding. "What the fuck?!"

"I like it when you swear." Theo Nott, of all people, chuckled and leaned back so he wasn't quite as in his face. "You make it sound classy."

He looked past Theo swiftly, eyes darting around to take stock of his situation. They were in an attic converted to a bedroom, the bed at one end under a dusty round window, and the trapdoor standing open on the other end under a matching window. On either side, overstuffed bookcases tried to hide trunks and piles of junk crammed under the eaves, leaving a narrow galley of a room that apparently ran the length of the house. The bed was old iron and horrifically creaky, screaming every time he moved. And there was a creased Holyhead Harpies poster tacked on the wall over the bed.

He jerked his eyes back to Theo. Still sat there smiling. "Is this your bedroom?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Why the hell am I in your bedroom?!"

"Because it's safe."

Draco stared at him, fully confused.

"You can stay here as long as you need to. No one will know where you are."

"You haven't explained what I'm doing here in the first place!"

Theo sighed. "You're so dramatic. Look, your house wasn't safe. Mine is."

"I was in my house! So what, you kidnapped me?" He felt his coat pocket, then all of his clothes, then the bed, getting more urgent about it the longer he looked without finding anything. "Where's my wand?"

"Yeah…" Theo said, looking away toward the corner of the room and leaning back on his hands. "I… didn't think that would be a great idea, for now."

"So you admit you kidnapped me and took my wand to keep me here? You son of a bitch!" Theo's hands were down, giving him an opportunity — he swiftly lunged for his shirt to try to get Theo's wand off him, or maybe even find his own there.

Theo yelped and lived up to his famous clumsiness by tumbling backward off the end of the bed; he hit the floor hard, but he also grabbed Draco's wrists and dragged him down with him. Probably on accident, but Draco wasn't in the mood to be charitable. There was an awkward scuffle as he still tried to get to Theo's wand, when neither one of them were any use at physically fighting, but Theo eventually managed to squirm out from under him and clamber to his feet.

He got his wand out, and that ended it. Draco wasn't stupid enough to try to fight someone armed for their wand. He pulled back and used the bed to pull himself up, clenching his fists around the rail.

"Okay, obviously you need some time to calm down," Theo said. He wasn't really brandishing his wand, but it was held out, ready enough, in case he needed to use it. "I'm gonna go, and I'll be back in a little bit, okay?" He backed toward the trap door.

"You won't get away with this, you fucking traitor!"

Theo glanced toward the door behind him, then back at Draco. Unfortunately, he wasn't stupid either, and he realised how vulnerable he'd be while climbing down. "Locomotor Wibbly," he said with a sharp poke of his wand, and Draco had to suddenly clutch at the bed as his legs turned to jelly and wobbled around uncontrollably, spilling him to the floor.

"Asshole!" Yelling ineffectually from the floor was all he could do, though, and Theo managed to get down and shut the door behind him.

The jinx wore off in another minute or so, and Draco immediately went to check the door. He yanked on it, found it obviously locked, and then kicked it when his strength was unsurprisingly not enough to get it open. He went from there to the front window; It obviously didn't open, and even if he broke it, he knew he'd find himself dangling off the third floor. It was also too grimy to see out of, not that he really wanted the view of Knockturn Alley that badly. And the back window was obviously the same.

After searched the room again for his missing wand, he yelled at Theo again for a couple minutes. He knew that wasn't going to anything, though, and he threw himself down on the bed.

—-

Theo came back maybe an hour later. Draco sat up when he heard him coming, and leaned against the wall behind the bed, arms crossed, watching. He didn't interrupt as Theo's head poked into the room, he looked around, and then let himself all the way up and closed the trapdoor behind him.

"All right," he said coldly. "I'm calm. Now talk."

Theo studied him for a moment, then relaxed a little and even put his wand into his pants pocket. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Maybe what was going through your mind when you decided to kidnap me?"

"Okay, first, that's a really dramatic word…"

"Oh, please, do correct me."

Theo shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "You need help, Draco."

"You've a very interesting idea of help."

"Look, have you seen yourself? I've watched you, all last year. You just got thinner and thinner… and sicker and sicker… and scareder and scareder… You don't sleep, you don't eat, you do just as much schoolwork as it takes to stay out of detention… I know you stay up nights crying."

Draco turned his face away. "That's done with," he said quietly.

"Yeah, but not because it's over, is it? It's because they know you can't get away now they've made you a murderer!"

"I didn't."

Theo stopped and blinked at him. "You didn't? Dumbledore—"

"I didn't kill him," Draco admitted. "Snape did it. But I should have." He gripped his arms tightly. Maybe if he had…

"Look at yourself!" Theo yelled, and Draco jumped and stared at him. "They have you so fucked up you think not killing someone is a bad thing! Not killing people is good, Draco! Killing is bad!"

"It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that!" He found himself yelling back without meaning to, defending decisions he didn't even like that he had to make himself, but he had made them, so he had to believe in them. "My family—"

"If they really loved you," Theo yelled right over him, "they wouldn't have made you get that!" He jabbed his finger toward Draco's arm.

Draco hissed in a breath. "Nobody 'made' me get anything."

"Yeah… but you didn't have a choice, did you?"

He grit his teeth so tightly his jaw ached. "Well, I do have it," he said coldly, and yanked his sleeve up, showing off the Dark Mark. A snake as black as the night twisted ever into the mouth of a skull, embedded in his flesh, always with him. "And that means all I have to do is touch this…" His right hand hovered over the Mark, middle finger slightly outstretched toward it. "And He'll be here. You Know Who."

Theo looked down at his arm, then back at his face. His expression was weirdly blank. "But are you really gonna call The Dark Lord so you can get away from your friend?"

His teeth were grinding again. His finger inched toward his arm. Then he ripped it away and averted his eyes, pulling his sleeve back down. Too fucking weak for that, too… but the thought of Him, here… He couldn't.

"Thanks for that. Nice to know you don't want to kill me."

"Oh fuck off."

Theo stared at him in silence for a long moment. Draco refused to look over.

"I guess you're probably thinking that you have to go back and make sure they know you didn't try to run away, or something bad's going to happen to your parents," he said eventually. Now Draco looked over sharply. "And I know that for a smart guy you do some really dumb shit when you're desperate. So I'm not gonna let you."

"You're not going to 'let' me what?"

"Go." Theo shrugged a little bit. "Go back. Hurt yourself for your asshole parents who made their own stupid choices a long time ago."

"Don't talk about my mother that way! She hasn't done anything!"

"She married your dad, didn't she? She knew. And, I mean… I've only been to your house a couple times a year and I know even I've heard her talk about Mudbloods. She's not a saint just 'cause she spoils her little mummy's boy."

"When I get my wand back I am going to turn you inside out."

"Yeah… So, yeah, I'll be keeping your wand, too. For safekeeping. And I'll lock the door so you can't do something stupid." He turned back toward the trapdoor, then looked back over his shoulder. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Draco. No matter what."

Draco gripped his arms and looked away again.

-------------------

((fun fact: I started writing a "three Slytherins become animagi" story a bit ago and then petered out because I didn't know what to do with it. I think this decided to be a future chapter of that story))

#whump writing #winter whumperland #amow winter whumperland 2023 #day4 #yandere whumper #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #theo x draco #theo nott whumper #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 5 months

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Whumpcember 1

All of this Whumpcember is a single, long fic, with the prompts used in specific scenes, in order. See the Masterlist and AO3 link here.

((content warnings: fever delirium / incapacitation, gentle whumper / carewhumper))

promptspiration: @whumpcember Day 1: Fever

Whumper: Harry Potter Whumpee: Draco Malfoy whump type: slow burn abuse fic with a whumpee who doesn't even realise he's a prisoner -> current looks like hurt/comfort, sick fic fic type: post-Hogwarts AU

words: ~700

-------------------

"I've got you."

The world swayed vaguely before Draco's eyes. Tall, close grey buildings. Loud rushing noises. He was so hot inside his skin, but the air felt too cold. He tried to pull at his collar so he could breathe better, but his hand was too weak. All of him was. Someone was holding him up, someone solid with messy black hair.

"Potter…?"

His voice was slurred, sounded like he was speaking through a mouthful of cotton. It hurt to even try. His mouth was so dry it felt like it cracked when he spoke, and his throat was swollen up around a fist-sized lump. The light hurt his eyes and stabbed through to his brain. He closed them and blocked out the surreal fragments of environment he couldn't fit together; blessed darkness. He just wanted to lie down. He could feel everything swaying and that was fine, the street would be comfortable…

The other made an alarmed sound and caught him around the side, pulling him back up. "It's okay, Draco," his disembodied voice said, and strong hands pulled him along. "It's okay, I've got you."

The voice slowly drew out and faded into another part of the background, and gradually everything else went with it.

—-

Warmth. Soft warmth. He was surrounded by it, smothered in it, but it couldn't get into him. He was so cold, down by his bones. He groaned and tried to pull it tighter to keep the heat in.

"Hey." There was a soft voice and a gentle hand that pulled material off his face. He turned his face away from the cold air, but a light hand touched his hair.

"Mother…" he murmured, and for some reason he felt so sad it hurt, deep in his chest. He pulled himself into a tight ball.

"Sorry, Draco, it's just me." A wizard's voice. "Can you hear me?" He groaned to show that he could, but without moving. "Can you open your eyes?"

He tried to think about it and groaned in the negative. He couldn't even contemplate it. He just wanted the darkness.

"All right." He felt the hands rub his back through the muffling layers of blanket. "I need you to drink something for me. You'll feel better." A hot, spicy smell intruded on his space and he jerked his face away, stomach revolting at the thought. A hand found the back of his head and ran over his hair, but held him toward the smell. "I know it sucks, but the medicine will help."

He reluctantly pushed himself up on one arm, wracked with constant shivers that rose up from his icy core like earthquakes, and cracked his eyes open enough to see the potion bottle in front of his face. His hand was trembling uncontrollably and the other person patiently helped him hold it so he could take sips of the unpleasant medicinal potion. Every drop of it made his stomach heave.

The hand rubbed his back until he got most of it down, then took the potion away. He tried to lie down again, but was pulled against the other wizard's shoulder. That was fine. There was some warmth from his body that helped, and he didn't have to hold himself up.

"Here. Water. You need this." The hand rubbed his back, and he opened his eyes a sliver to find there was a glass of water in front of him. Water. He hadn't realised it before, but now suddenly that was the only thing in the world he wanted. He grasped the glass with the other's help and gulped it down. Cold, wet, soothing, it wiped out the taste of the medicine and his sick breaths and felt so good. He didn't even care when it spilled, except that was less he could drink.

He eventually had to breathe and let the glass go, and it disappeared. His eyes sank closed and he let his head fall back against the other shoulder. "Better?" He nodded vaguely, and the hand running over his hair felt nice. "Good. You'll be okay.. You can go back to sleep, the medicine will help the fever break…"

He lost track of the words, just the sound of the voice. The body heat helped ease the shivering, and he drifted back into more comfortable darkness.

#whump writing #whumpcember2023 #whumpcember2023 day 1 #fever #sick fic #hurt/comfort #draco malfoy whump #harry x draco #draco x harry #carewhumper #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 7 months

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Cassandra

((Content warning: --))

((Promptspiration: @week-of-whump 2023: October 10: Muzzle / "You're a liar." @whumppromptoftheday : "Whumpee going for help and being turned away" ))

Whumpee: Draco

Whumper: McGonagall but actually Voldemort

Caretaker: --

Whump type: Psychological

Fic type: Alternate history

((words: ~600))

------------------------------------

Draco hung back while everyone else filed out of Transfiguration, loitering over his books and his uneasiness. His decision was terrifying, but also... sort of a relief? If he could just follow through with it, he could be free... The idea sent a frantic swarm of butterflies through his gut.

"Are you dawdling for a reason, Malfoy?" McGonagall tapped the edge of his desk.

He glanced up at her quickly, then darted his eyes around the room to make sure they were alone. He gripped the edge of his final book tightly. "I need to speak with you, Professor."

"Is this about the deplorable state of your homework this year? Granted you have at least deigned to go back to turning it in, which is an improvement."

He flexed the book tightly in his hands, hesitating. She was hardly his favourite teacher; she was about the only one he'd never been able to charm to some degree, and she lacked patience for his attempts and general personality. She was the most Gryffindor thing in the castle: direct, opinionated, forceful, stubborn. He didn't have a lot of respect for that.

But it did mean he trusted her. The idea of McGonagall not doing the right thing when presented with the option was as unthinkable as the sun opting not to rise. Even if she didn't like that right thing, or who she had to work with to do it. There was a lot of strength in being so horribly noble.

"I've... been ordered to kill Dumbledore," he said quietly. His heart was in his throat, but there, it was out. It was in the world. The rest of the words just fell out in the wake of it, like the gates were opened now. "The Dark Lord, he's been in my house, with all the other Death Eaters. Bellatrix. I've got to, he'll kill me, but I don't... I can't--"

"Are you quite finished?"

He hissed to a stop and gaped at her, struck dumb as if he'd been Silenced.

Her expression was hard and humourless. "That is as outrageous an excuse for missing homework as I have ever heard. At your age, you should have grown out of telling these ridiculous lies for attention."

"...I'm not..." The butterflies in his gut were being picked off one by one and their corpses were settling into a leaden weight at his core. How was this possible? To actually try and be met with just sheer rejection...

"You should be ashamed of yourself," she said severely. "Now go to lunch, and try to remember your essay this week."

"You've got to listen to me!" he tried desperately. "This is real. I'm a Death Eater -- I've got this!" He yanked up his sleeve to reveal the lurid black blemish of the Dark Mark covering the inside of his arm. "You've got to help me!"

"Fifty points from Slytherin for that obscenity!" she snapped, a tightly controlled fury and revulsion making her face hard. "And if I hear one more word of this, it will be detention as well. Now get out."

He pulled his sleeve down and fled the room, mind and heart racing, sick to his stomach. How? How could she not believe him...?

He'd been cursed, he realised sickly. He closed himself in a dusty, disused classroom nearby and sank against the wall, holding his head. The Cassandra Curse, powerful Dark magic that meant the cursed person would speak the truth but never be believed. That was the only thing that made sense.

So no matter what he said, no matter how earnest or convincing or honest he was, no matter what evidence he had... no one would believe him. Ever.

There wasn't any help. There wasn't any way out...

#whump week #whump writing #draco whumpee #alternate history #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 6 days

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Whumpcember 19

All of this Whumpcember is a single, long fic, with the prompts used in specific scenes, in order. See the Masterlist and AO3 link here.

((content warnings: suicidal despair, chronic pain ))

promptspiration: @whumpcember Day 19: Exhaustion

Whumpee: Draco Malfoy Whumper: Harry Potter Pairing: Harry/Draco whump type: despair fic type: post-Hogwarts AU

words: ~400

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The stairs were forever.

He pulled himself up, step after endless step. His hand was too heavy to lift from the railing, sliding along with its weak grip. His feet were leaden, dragged only with effort over each rise, heavier each time he set them down, and aching again anew every time they came to rest. It took more and more effort to move them forward again, but he had to keep going.

He swayed to a stop, staring at his feet, and slowly lifted his eyes. The stairs climbed up above him still, ten more steps, maybe. Ten more interminable, impossible steps…

He realised he couldn't imagine taking those steps. Forcing himself to lift his foot again, to tighten his grip again… why? Dragging himself forward, trying…

Why?

He slowly sank down and sat on the step, arms wrapped around the cold, empty feeling inside, staring blankly past his knees. There wasn't anything up there to go toward… or down there… or out there… There was nothing.

Even when he was so disconnected from his body, he still hurt, off in the distance. It hurt to climb… to walk… breathe… Why go through the pain for nothing? Why did he have to take it…?

The hall and stairs grew dim with evening; he was distantly aware of it. He should move, but… he couldn't find the strength. Or a reason. It was so much simpler to sit there and stare at nothing, waiting for something to change. He was almost surprised he wasn't crying, but even that felt too hard, too much effort. He didn't have even that much left to give.

"Draco?" Harry must have come down the hall at some point. "I thought you were going to have a nap?" He came up the bottom few steps.

His weak hand slowly stopped kneading his half hand. "I can't," he said distantly, and bowed his head, gripping the back of his hair.

"It's okay, I'll help you up there." Harry took his hand from his hair and started pulling him to his feet.

It wasn't about the stairs. "It's too hard," he said quietly. "To keep going…"

Harry focused on him sharply, and then pulled him against his chest with convulsive tightness. "It's okay," he promised into his hair, clinging tightly to him. "It's okay. I'll fix it. Just stay with me."

#whump writing #whumpcember2023 #whumpcember20203 day 19 #exhaustion #writing #draco whumpee #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it #despair tw

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 5 months

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Whumpcember 4

All of this Whumpcember is a single, long fic, with the prompts used in specific scenes, in order. See the Masterlist and AO3 link here.

((content warnings: amputation, depression, parent death, gentle whumper / carewhumper))

promptspiration: @whumpcember Day 4: Hidden Injury

Whumpee: Draco Malfoy Carewhumper: Harry Potter whump type: slow burn abuse fic with a whumpee who doesn't even realise he's a prisoner -> looks like hurt/comfort, angst fic type: post-Hogwarts AU

words: ~2700

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Harry Potter was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes, a scruffy figure in jeans and a Muggle shirt in profile. He needed a shave. And to comb his hair, but he always looked that way.

Draco just looked blankly; he didn't really want to be awake. But he supposed he couldn't sleep forever.

Potter was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down into his hands. He didn't look like he knew he was being watched. He looked distant, solemn… tired…

That was probably down to him, he supposed. Not that he'd asked for it, but… still.

"Potter?" he said quietly.

Potter looked up sharply, green eyes lighting on him with surprisingly intense concern. "Draco. You're awake. How do you feel?"

"Honestly?"

"Please." Harry's hand settled on his arm.

"Everything hurts," he said, and closed his eyes. Aside from his throbbing headache, it was hard to pick anything out of the universal ache, but he tried not to move so it wouldn't be exacerbated. All of his muscles just felt tight and exhausted… almost like the aftereffects of a long Cruciatus curse. "And I'm cold and I still… know what I did." That part was quiet. "You're wasting your energy."

"I'm not." Potter pulled another blanket over him, tucking it down in front of him, trying to help conserve whatever heat he had.

He was, though. Wasting his energy. Even right there, that gesture, it was so pointless, because he didn't have any heat to conserve. He should have just left him in the snow…

"Hey." Harry shook his arm lightly and got him to look at him. "If you give up, whoever's behind this is going to get away with it. I know that's not what you want."

He looked at Potter's face for a moment, then dropped his eyes back down to the covered window on the other side of him. He didn't care; why would it even matter anymore? Without them…

When that didn't get through to him, Potter tried again. "I know it's not what your parents would have wanted. You know your mother would want you to live… and your father would have wanted to see the perpetrator destroyed."

"Thoroughly and extrajudicially," Draco agreed quietly, distantly. That, strangely, didn't quite hurt to think about; that was simply so his father, he could imagine it clearly. Even after the war, he was better, but that still didn't mean he was completely domesticated. He would have made sure to handle this. If it were Draco and his mother who had been killed, the Aurors would never find a piece of the killer larger than a finger.

"It's weird that that's a fond thought, isn't it?" he murmured.

"Honestly? No comment. Your family are something special, that's for sure."

Special. That was a word for it. They really were… or… had been… His hand hurt as he clenched it under the blankets. "You're right, though," he admitted. "My parents would want revenge."

"Well, justice, anyway."

"No." He stared at the curtain distantly, measuring time in the heartbeats reflected in his throbbing head and hand. "Revenge. But they may have to settle for justice… Neither of us is capable of taking someone out to the woods and killing them by inches."

"'Neither of us'?" Harry leaned over to get into his line of sight. "So you're agreeing that I'm your ally?" He was smiling a little bit.

He glanced at Potter, then away. "I guess I am," he allowed. He started working his hand out of the pile of warming blanket, so that he could wipe the idea of tears off his face.

Harry quickly took hold of his arm, gently but firmly, and held it in place beneath the blanket. It pulsed with pain under his grip. "Wait. Just, first… Wait." He took a breath; his smile had disappeared. "Maybe you should see if you can sleep some more."

He looked at him blankly. "That hurts," he told him after several seconds of them just staring at each other.

Harry looked at his hand and lifted it away, then back at his face. "I'm sorry, I just…" He sat down again, staring back into his hands. "I'm so sorry."

"It didn't hurt that much." He started to sit up, and paused to hold his breath against a sudden ripping cramp in his gut, with his arm wrapped around his stomach; he didn't make a sound, but it was actually surprisingly hard not to. He had to wait a minute for it to pass; it didn't go away, but it faded to somewhat less urgency. "I really think I need to eat," he managed, faintly, once he could breathe.

"Yeah." Harry continued staring at his hands. "It's been… yeah, you do." He didn't move, though.

Draco pushed himself carefully back against the wall behind the bed, moving slowly; his head couldn't seem to settle, and now that he had started moving, the dizziness wasn't abating. Maybe he should have stayed lying down. Having something at his back eased the vertigo a little. He really needed to eat, probably.

He was cold, but it was a cold from inside that no amount of blankets was helping, and the weight of them was making him feel trapped, suffocated; between the dizziness, the hunger, the headache, the blankets, something had to change, and there was only one thing he could do anything about, so he kicked and dragged them off of him.

His hand was feeling clumsy, but that didn't really register until he finally freed it from the blankets and started shoving them down, and he could see it.

His hand looked strange. He stared at it, but it refused to register. For some reason he could only see half his hand. "What…"

"I'm sorry," Harry said quietly.

He picked up his hand; there was still only half of it. His thumb and first finger seemed normal, but then… The middle finger was gone, only a short, asymmetrical nub that met with the top of his palm, and even that knuckle was gone for the last two. Like his hand had been severed at a sharp angle to take off the last three fingers in one blow. "What…" He flexed his hand and watched the single finger bend. The side of his hand where the bones in his palm had been cut through ached when he moved it.

"I had to," Harry said quietly.

"No…" He shoved himself along the bed, trying to get up, get away from him, but his head spun and instead he tumbled, tangled in the blankets. He caught himself hard on the ground on both hands and cried out — pain jarred all the way from his right hand, along his arm, up the side of his neck, and merged into his headache.

"Draco—" Potter was on the floor beside him, hands on his arms.

"Get away from me!" He tried to shove him away, but didn't have the strength to actually move him. He shoved anyway. "You son of a bitch! You cut off my hand!"

"I had to!" Potter grabbed his arm, trying to get him to stop fighting, and he fought that instead.

"You bloody didn't!"

Potter grabbed him by the upper arms, and for a second, just a second, he saw anger on Potter's face, and he stopped breathing.

Then it was gone, and Harry shook him. "You left, Draco!" His head bumped into the mattress and he gasped in pain. "You walked off into the snow and tried to die! I couldn't find you…"

He raised his hand into Potter's chest to try to get him off.

He let him go and stepped away, and scrubbed his hand through his messy hair. "This is my fault." he said. "I know it, I fucked up. I left you alone, and I shouldn't… I knew you'd be in a bad place, but I didn't think you'd go that far. And no one could see you to help you because of the Fidelius—"

"What Fidelius Charm?" he interrupted, holding the back of his head — using only his left hand, which was still whole, trying to ignore his right and what it was now.

Potter looked at him quickly. "The one I cast to hide you. Days ago."

"I'd've had to do my part, I would know—"

"One of the times you woke up… You don't remember," Potter realised blankly, and then turned away with a wordless groan of frustration, thrusting his fist against the wall beside the door. "Everything I try to do to help anything just keeps making it worse!" He punctuated the end of the sentence with a pair of constrained punches against the wall.

Draco had to struggle to swallow, watching that. There was fear in him and he didn't really know why, but that fist against the wall seemed like all he could see.

Harry Potter had hit him before, he remembered. Him and a Weasley, beat him so badly he spent the weekend in the hospital wing.

Was that it? He didn't have any actual memories, but his mind could still remember the feeling of that? And thought he needed to be reminded of it now?

He took a breath and looked down at his hand, focusing on that instead of old feelings. Good — anger. "And what was this meant to help?" He held it up at him.

"You were out there in the snow too long… You were freezing. Your hand froze. I did as much as I could, but—"

"It wasn't that long."

Harry narrowed his eyes at him. "It was two days," he said quietly.

"It was not!"

Harry just looked at him, and in a minute Draco dropped his eyes and pulled up his knees to rest his arms on, rubbing his aching hand. How could he not remember that? He'd thought it was a few hours. Not even overnight. It still didn't feel like that could possibly be right.

"You're lucky you only lost a few fingers and toes. You almost died. I still can't get you warm—"

"So you know what you do then?" He glared up at him. "Hos-pit-al. I would rather be arrested than this!" He held up his hand again, throwing what he'd done back in his face. "I can't hold a wand, Potter! I can't do magic!"

"At least you aren't getting the Dementor's kiss!"

"There aren't any Dementors in Azkaban anymore, you nutjob!"

"You don't remember the last two years! You don't know how bad it's gotten."

"Well, aren't you meant to be the hero? Aren't you supposed to fix all that?"

"What do you think I'm trying to do? Why do you think I'm doing all this to keep you safe?"

They stopped yelling over each other. Draco had to catch his breath a little, and watched him quietly for a long moment. That made everything make a lot more sense. "This isn't about me, is it?"

"It's not… just… about you," he allowed. "I think you're the first mistake they've made."

"'They'."

"'They'," Harry agreed, and looked at the wall. "There's something going on, something big. Someone in the Ministry, in society… Controlling things, manipulating things. I can't tell toward what end, but I can see it going on, and the changes… they're not good. I actually started investigating you because I thought your family was behind it," he admitted. "I didn't know about the Imperius, I thought it was you or your father intentionally. I… It's possible they had you do what you did because I was getting too close and they needed to cover their tracks. I don't know. I hope not, but if so, I'm sorry."

Draco ran his hand into his greasy hair and held the back of his neck. He wished he could blame Potter, but only so he didn't have to feel it himself. But at least he'd been looking into it. If he hadn't been, Draco knew he would probably still be under the control of… whoever was responsible for this.

But his parents would probably still be alive…

Potter crouched on the rug in front of him, arms balanced on his knees. "I'm an Auror, but that's all I am. Street level. It goes way above me. If I let anyone get hold of you, somebody above me will give you about a ten second trial and feed you to the Dementors, and then frame it as justice for your heinous crimes. You're the only evidence against them, the only loose end still hanging, and they'll do anything to get rid of you. I can't let that happen."

"If you had that, why did you try to lead with saying you fancied me?"

Potter shrugged a little, glancing away with embarrassment that still managed not to make him pink in the face. "Seemed like a good idea at the time… I guess on some level I wanted you to know, and it came out because I was worrying about you. I know it's awkward, but I still don't regret it."

"Didn't you have a little redheaded girlfriend?"

"It's been a long couple years," Harry said quietly. "And you're not in a great position to be talking about anyone like that."

Draco glanced at him, then away again and didn't answer.

"I'm going to do whatever I have to to keep you safe, and, yeah, it's not just for you, but it's still going to help you. We'll find out who's behind this, clean out the Ministry again, and get justice for you and your parents along the way. We'll clear your name and get your life back. But to do that, you have to trust me, and do as I say."

Draco gripped the back of his neck. 'Do as I say.' That made him nauseous in a whole new way. Like seeing Potter's fist, a feeling he couldn't connect to anything. He thought maybe that came from Voldemort.

"You have to stay hidden. You have to stay here — people out there will kill you and then the public will celebrate. This house is safe. Just, be patient, and trust me to protect you. Can you do that?"

"Can you be more condescending?" he muttered.

"It's a genuine question. I know you're used to being in charge, but you're going to have to sit tight and just wait for my investigation. And if you get too restless and go try to take matters into your own hands, you're going to put everything at risk."

He didn't answer. Just sit here and do as he was told.

Harry watched him for a moment, then looked away with a small shrug. "If it helps, it's weird for me too… But you're the only person in the world I know I can trust. We need each other."

He was sure it reflected something unflattering in him that these motivations seemed more realistic, and were more acceptable, than Harry Potter trying to help him just because he was innocent. The fact was that they made sense, though. Potter trying to save the world? Yes, that he understood. Even being willing to work with him to do it. And… if there were justice to be had for his family, that was the best chance of it, he knew that. And in return, all he had to do was bide his time and not get in the way.

"Yes," he said. "I can do that."

"Good. And you're not going to try to hurt yourself again…"

"No," he said quietly.

Potter squeezed his arm without a word. "I know I have a lot to make up for. I promise, no one will get to you while I can do anything about it." Harry stood up and grabbed his uninjured hand, pulling him to get up. "I'll help you get downstairs."

He tried to pull his hand free; Potter was insistent, and didn't let him go. "I didn't ask you to."

"I know, but forgive me if I don't trust you to leave you alone, all right? You're really bad at staying put. And do you think there's any chance you'd actually be able to stand on your own without falling over and puking?"

He declined to answer that, but stopped trying to pull away.

======

(there is a whole chapter of context missing between days 4 and 5 which is on AO3)

#whump writing #whumpcember2023 #whumpcember2023 day 4 #hidden injury #draco x harry #draco whumpee #draco malfoy whump #hurt/comfort #angst #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 3 months

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Whumpuary 8

Whumpuary prompts should theoretically make up one cohesive narrative, though I'm not currently putting in the effort to flesh out the story around the prompts just yet. I have good intentions to do so eventually. Masterlist. Oh yeah and they're totally out of order, chronologically.

((content warnings: mention of torture, mention of extended imprisonment / isolation ))

promptspiration: @whumpuary 08: Muffled Screams, Hostage

Whumpee: Draco Malfoy, Garrick Ollivander Whumper: Voldemort et al. whump type: captivity fic type: Deathly Hallows "Voldemort learns Draco hooked up with Harry" AU

Draco's thrown into the cellar with Ollivander to be a prisoner.

words: ~1100

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When Draco came to, he wasn't certain that he had, because it was still utterly dark. Then the idea that was was been blinded occurred to him and he made a little sound of fear in his throat.

A voice came from somewhere not very far to his left. "Who's is it?" The voice was thready and feeble, a wizard… probably… but weak.

That made him frown a little bit and he felt around him. It was cold, and the floor was earth, unpleasantly grainy against his hands. When he found the wall behind him, it was rough stone.

He was in the cellar. Not blind, it was just the dark of being underground.

He had almost forgotten that Ollivander was here. Or, not necessarily forgotten, but he hadn't thought about it. He wasn't… exactly… proud of that.

"Draco Malfoy," he admitted. His voice was hoarse and unrecognisable, and painful in his throat.

Ollivander didn't speak. He could imagine why. The man had been prisoner here for a year now, and while it had been Wormtail dragging him out to be interrogated, Wormtail wasn't exactly his only captor. His family had basically tried to ignore the situation, but it was their house that was his prison. Draco hadn't really done anything to him… but he'd been there, some of the time, and he hadn't exactly done anything for him, either.

"Ten inches," Ollivander recited distantly. His voice was still quavering, but that seemed to just be how he was now. He sounded like he would break if he so much as tried to speak too loudly. "Reasonably springy, unicorn hair core. Hawthorn… An unusual wandwood to put in the hands of a young wizard. Dangerous, if poorly handled. Full of contradictions."

He dropped his head back against the wall. He hadn't thought about that in ages. When he'd gotten his wand, he'd been insufferable, crowing to everyone who would listen about how special it was, that hawthorn was only for skilled wizards, and obviously it recognised his talent. Really fucking lived up to that, hadn't he…

"I take it that it was you I've been hearing. The screaming."

Draco pulled his knees up and looped his arms loosely around them. "Yeah," he admitted

"May I ask why?"

He rested his chin behind his knees, staring at the impenetrable darkness. Everyone else knew… it wasn't like he could pretend it was a secret anymore. "Fucked Harry Potter," he muttered.

Ollivander made an alarming wheezing sound that it took Draco a long moment to realise was a laugh. He hunched his shoulders with a scowl at nothing. Yeah, right, it was fucking hilarious. He probably thought he was getting what he deserved.

"Youthful indiscretions," Ollivander said wistfully. "I suppose most of us are lucky to have only our parents and the respect of our future selves to answer to for our young loves."

He physically flinched at that description — a mistake of a shag one time was bad enough, a few kisses over the years was even worse, but if there was a suggestion that he loved Harry Potter, that there were emotions, and he knew there were but there could not be — no, if the Dark lord heard even a hint of love, Draco would wish he were allowed to die.

"It's not that," he said fiercely. "It just… happened. It didn't mean anything."

"Is that so?" Ollivander's distant voice was weirdly lacking in any of the judgement Draco kept expecting to hear. "Hawthorn is at home in the hand of a conflicted wizard."

He looked away. As though he could see anything in the pitch blackness. "I can't have been that conflicted when I was eleven, I hadn't even met him when I got it."

"Or a complicated one."

He wasn't sure what to say to that. He picked at the buttonhole on his shirt cuff, and then dropped it and painfully pushed himself up the wall, to his feet. He didn't have a goal, just… doing something.

"Be careful, if you mean to move," Ollivander cautioned. "I couldn't tell if you were injured, but they were not overly gentle when they threw you down the stairs."

He flushed, at the thought that someone… Wormtail, probably… literally levitated him to the cellar and just tossed him down the stairs. Like a sack. Like a sack full of nothing important or valuable. "I'm fine."

"As you like," the old man said complacently. "There is a beam you can just reach… Follow it and you won't find any obstacles. The walking helps… as much as anything can…"

He felt above his head, despite the ache in his back and shoulders; the ceiling was low, and he was quite a bit taller than Ollivander, so he could reach it easily, when he found it. He slowly limped forward, still uncertain in the darkness. It didn't feel great to walk, but he'd learned by now that it was only worse if you didn't and let everything get stiff.

"There is water, for now. The young man with the silver hand doesn't always remember to refresh it."

Draco stopped at what he thought must be pretty close to the end of the beam, although he couldn't feel any walls. "Why are you being so…" He hoped in trailing off, Ollivander would supply a word. Nice? Not really 'nice', but… But no, he remained silent, and it stretched out. "You should hate me," he finally said.

"Should I?" Ollivander mused vaguely. "I suppose hating someone who has never done me harm feels like too much trouble, now…"

Draco dropped his eyes. How could he have been locked in here for a year and not hate everyone who had put him there, and everyone who had abandoned him… Just everyone?

"And, to be honest… Although I am sorry for your situation… I am glad of the company."

Draco tried to imagine being alone — not just isolated, but actually alone — for that long, except to be dragged out in front of Him and tortured, and it made him want to throw up. He found the beam above his head again and turned around to follow it hesitantly back to the wall. "You all right?" he asked awkwardly.

"As well as can be expected, under the circumstance…"

He found the wall again with his fingers, and slid down it to sit, holding his stomach. "You won't have my company for long." He looked at nothing. "Just until He decides how to kill me in the way that will disturb Potter the most."

"Or he accepts that I truly have nothing else to offer him…"

Ollivander's voice sounded strangely wistful again. Draco wondered if he was looking forward to being put out of his misery.

He wondered how long until he felt that way.

#whumpuary2024 #whumpuaryno8 #hostage #muffled screams #harry potter fic #harry/draco #draco whumpee #whump writing #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 5 months

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((contents: emotional whump, child whumpee, child emotional abuse, domination, mind control / conditioning))

Promptspiration: @thebestieyoureinlovewith ask; same universe as this fic.

Whumpee: Draco Whumper: Lucius Caretaker: Snape Fic type: Hogwarts first year, weird AU (Malfoy blood magic AU)

((words: ~2300))

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The morning after the detention in the Forbidden Forest, Draco came to breakfast armed with a lengthy, caustic letter home, lovingly detailing the myriad failings and incompetencies of the staff and systems of the school, that they would send him to such an unthinkable, moronic punishment, for the mere crime of trying to make sure that everyone was following the rules. Even people who thought they were something special, but utterly weren't.

He accepted his mother's semiweekly note and care package from Hermes with less interest than he normally had, gave the owl a sausage for it to savage, and took immense pleasure in sending it back with his missive. His parents were going to be so outraged. His father was going to take this to the board of governors as more evidence of how incompetent Dumbledore was, it was going to be the final bit he needed to finally get him sacked like he'd always wanted...

The satisfaction of that was still hovering in the back of his mind when he went to class, and he didn't even mind that it was Transfiguration with McGonagall and the Gryffindors, and that carried him through the day.

It was easy for him to tell when his father read his letter, after lunch, because that feeling evaporated and turned into something that was almost pain. His spoon fell clattering against the side of his cauldron as he clutched at his chest with a quiet whimper.

The pain wasn't actually in his chest, of course. It wasn't in his body, but it was very real. For as long as he could remember, he'd felt these things that told him how his father was feeling toward him, so he always knew how to do what he wanted. Even across the distance between Scotland and Wiltshire, or London, or wherever his father was today. He'd expected the warm, giddy feeling of his father being pleased with what he'd done -- not this! It was like someone had grabbed hold of his heart and was pulling it out, leaving an empty hole that ached.

It actually hurt. His father was actually angry with him. But why?! Telling him how terrible Dumbledore allowed the school to be run was supposed to make him happy! What did he do wrong? How did he fix it?!

"Did you eat too much?" Goyle wondered sympathetically. "That's what makes me do that. Next time try to drink something between plates."

"No-- shut up..." He gasped and squeezed his eyes shut, willing the feeling to pass and his father to not be angry with him.

The only vaguely interesting thing first year Potions had for its professor was the many and various ways the little idiots tried to kill themselves, each other, or him. It was a very irritating combination of the height of tedium and constant, low-level anxiety as he had to be eternally vigilant for some new innovation in incompetence that would prematurely end two dozen very promising careers as manual labourers and petty bureaucrats.

A few minutes before the blessed end of his torture, as he patrolled the room to ensure none of the dimwits had created anything too poisonous, he picked up the always-troubling sounds of sniggering from the most disruptive table in the room. Potter's, of course. "Maybe Malfoy ate one of the leeches," Weasley was saying hopefully, and Longbottom chuckled nervously.

"Five points from Gryffindor," he said casually as he passed. "You don't have the time to be concerned about other tables when your potion is that shade of orange."

He could fairly hear them scowling at his back. He supposed these classes weren't all bad.

Weasley wasn't wrong about Draco, though. Draco was one of the perhaps four students in the classroom he would say showed any promise at all in the subject, and it wasn't like him to be standing blankly over his cauldron when he still had to turn in his work. He had his eyes closed under a furrowed brow and was holding the edge of his workstation with a white-knuckled grip, barely breathing.

Clearly symptoms of something, but nothing in their cure for boils should have been able to cause that. Then again... He must, reluctantly, admit that his own house held the worst offenders for sheer incompetence this year.

"Draco," he drawled. "Did you happen to taste Goyle's mixture while you were doing his work for him?"

"No..." Draco took a breath and bit his lip to stifle a barely-audible whimper.

Goyle looked quizzically at his noxiously steaming cauldron, and he could see on his face the moment he had the brilliant idea to actually taste it. He slapped the spoon out of Goyle's hand without a word before he could get it to his face. That child was a menace.

"Perhaps, then, you would like to visit the nurse."

"No." Draco opened his eyes and looked at him, then dropped his eyes. "I'm fine," he said stubbornly.

"Very well. You have two minutes to leave your potions on my desk, and then you may go," he announced to the class, sweeping away.

Draco brought up his potion and left the room with his station cleaned before most of the rest of the class, and he did not give it much more thought, though the situation remained in the back of his mind.

It did not escape his attention a couple hours later, however, that Draco did not come to dinner, and that fact made a connection he had not thought about in years.

He left the great hall without drawing attention to himself and let himself into the Slytherin common room. The only students there skipping dinner were a pair of seventh years cramming for their N.E.W.T.s, who barely greeted him, and he returned the favour.

He thought at first that the first year dorms were empty, but old instincts made him check further; he found Draco sitting on the floor beside his bed, knees drawn up, holding his hair. When he realised he was found he scrambled to his feet to try to pretend nothing was wrong.

"It's your father, I assume." He didn't bother with any preamble.

"I don't know what you mean," Draco lied badly, staring at the foot of his bed. That was telling; normally he was a very good liar.

"I am aware of your family's magic. I have known your father since he was a student," he reminded him.

Draco looked up at him quickly, his eyes wide -- it was almost a challenge not to see into his mind, but there was very little coherent there, at least on the surface. He was just desperately thinking about his father.

After a second, when he decided he believed him and could trust him, Draco crumpled onto the bed, hunched over and arms wrapped around his stomach like he was about to be sick. "He's angry with me," he admitted in a small voice. "I sent him another owl after classes but he hasn't read it yet..." His voice was miserable. "Or it wasn't right..."

This was... infuriating. Draco had done nothing worthy of actual anger; maybe some annoyance or disappointment, and his experience with Lucius told him neither of those would be so incapacitating. As far as he could tell, Lucius had no reason to be punishing him except for the pleasure of doing so; the boy's father was truly his friend, but he was also truly possessed of some very unflattering qualities.

"Go to the hospital wing," he instructed. "Tell Madame Pomfrey I sent you for a Sleeping Draught; you'll be able to sleep it off."

Draco hunched his shoulders and looked up at him. "I don't need that," he insisted. "I can apologise..."

Infuriating. "It's interfering with your classes," he said, instead of telling him his reaction, his desperate need to be forgiven for nothing he had done wrong, was disgusting. It wasn't his fault, he supposed, but that didn't mean he liked seeing it. "Sleep it off, and inform me if this happens again."

Draco hunched over further, expression stricken with shame, until he hid it.

He could hear more students in the common room; he thought about telling Draco that it was his father who needed to fix this, not him, but he didn't think he would hear it. He turned without another word and left before they could be interrupted by any of the other boys.

Then he used the floo fireplace in his office to throw a note into Malfoy manor, calling for Lucius to come meet him in person.

---

They took a corner table on the upper floor of the Three Broomsticks. He took a single whisky to nurse, largely because he knew it annoyed Rosmerta to no end when he did so, but also because he was still ostensibly on duty at the school. Her table would be well paid-for, anyway; Lucius was hardly chary with his wine.

Whatever Lucius was feeling that was being reflected in Draco, he wasn't showing it. Nor would he expect him to; Lucius' capacity for compartmentalisation was second to none, not even his own. He sat with all the poise and casual good humour natural to Lucius when he was in any situation he controlled, which was by and large all of them.

"Your blood curse is interfering with my teaching," he said, after all the niceties were out of the way.

"It isn't a curse," Lucius said with mild-mannered dismissiveness.

It most certainly was, but there was no sense arguing about it. "Regardless," he said with equal dismissiveness. "It's becoming a problem. I'm sure you don't want attention drawn to it."

Lucius thoughtfully swirled his wine. "He's acting out? He should know better."

He gave him a severe look, quashing his own irritation. Of course he expected the child to hide what was happening. "Not obviously, but he is eleven. He is going to show it when he is in pain."

"I'll have to work on that."

Severus carefully divorced himself from the hints of offended disgust that reaction engendered in him. He didn't know what else he had expected, honestly. "In the meantime, consider rethinking your approach," he said, rationally instead of emotionally. "You may find it satisfying, but leaving him with your anger and no explanation isn't teaching him any lessons; it's just torture."

"You make it sound like a conscious choice to be angry."

"As though you have had a sustained emotion you didn't carefully inspect and consciously allow yourself to indulge in the last twenty years," he said dryly.

Lucius chuckled into his wine and didn't deny it. "He knows what he did wrong."

"I guarantee, if he knew, he would be falling over himself to repent. He wasn't able to eat tonight; I'm sure you remember how that feels." He sipped his whisky for its warming glow. "Personally, I see no cause for your anger either. If this is about his detention, the infraction was minor, merely an instance of being out of bed after curfew. I wouldn't even have bothered with detention for it, if it had been up to me. I hope you're not so draconian you'd hold that against him to this extent."

"He should have known better than to be caught," Lucius pointed out. "But no, that's a learning opportunity. However, he's supposed to be making connections with Harry Potter, not antagonising him and making a fool of himself in front of him."

"Is that all? Draco has the right idea there; Harry Potter is a useless, arrogant little brat."

"That may be, but his actual value has yet to be established."

"None," he asserted, allowing himself a scowl. "There is absolutely nothing special about that boy. There's no point in dragging your name down by forcing your son to associate with him. Even if there were a chance he would be receptive, which there is not."

Lucius considered him thoughtfully over his glass for a long moment while Rosmerta dropped off another and continued until they were alone again. Then he gave a measured shrug. "I trust your judgement," he allowed. "It will be something of a relief if he does turn out to be unsuitable. It does remain that Draco didn't do as he was told, though."

He stared unblinking at him. The most infuriating thing about this situation was that he genuinely believed Lucius didn't actually mean anything by his behaviour. He cared for his son -- loved him, probably even liked him. It was just that petty sadism was his only real vice. Having power over people was intoxicating to him, and when he had it he simply had to flaunt it, sometimes even against his own interests. Even, apparently, when it was his own son. "You don't sound like yourself anymore, Lucius."

Lucius raised a very judgemental eyebrow at him.

"I seem to recall a drunken tirade about the cruelty of being enslaved to one's bloodline not so many years ago."

"A moment of weakness," Lucius said dismissively.

"Indeed." He sipped his whisky distantly. "I wonder what it is about becoming a father that turns men into monsters."

Lucius's eyes narrowed, and he sat his barely-touched glass in the middle of the table. "Well, thank you for the invitation, Severus," he said with bland, cool propriety as he stood. "It's been depressing as always."

"It has," Severus agreed, and didn't watch him as he left. He stayed there for a while, alone, to finish his drink.

---

The next morning, Draco came to breakfast energetic and apparently untroubled, with plenty of appetite, and that was good to see.

#whump writing #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #draco whumpee #lucius whumper #snape caretaker #malfoy blood magic au #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it

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whumpitlikeyoumeanit · 1 month

Text

Whumpcember 15

All of this Whumpcember is a single, long fic, with the prompts used in specific scenes, in order. See the Masterlist and AO3 link here.

((content warnings: unreality, hallucinations, pain, stalking, not being believed ))

promptspiration: @whumpcember Day 15: Hallucinations

Whumpee: Draco Malfoy Whumper: Voldemort Pairing: Harry/Draco whump type: unreality, torture fic type: post-Hogwarts AU

words: ~4200

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Draco's arm was hurting. Not badly, but just a sort of constant ache in the dragon that he didn't really notice amongst his other aches until some twinge brought it to his attention.

Like the one that had him dropping a bowl between the table and sink, holding his arm with a gasp. The bowl bounced, luckily, and rolled into the table leg; he bent over to retrieve it, and his head swam as he stood up, and he caught sight of a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. He jerked toward it with a sharp breath, but there was nothing there.

"Draco?" Harry had a concerned expression on his face.

He looked again and shook his head. "Sorry. I'm all right, just a little light-headed." He looked at the bowl in his hands to figure out what he was meant to be doing with it, and settled on delivering it to the sink.

"That isn't better." Harry slid from his seat and set his hand on his back. "You've been eating okay, I think, right? Taking your potion?"

Harry would know better than he would. "Yes. I'm fine."

"This is new, isn't it? The vertigo and nausea have been gone for a while. You got better."

"Mostly," he agreed. "I've got used to it."

"I didn't realise that." Harry felt his forehead for a fever. "I thought it was completely gone."

"I'm all right," he repeated patiently.

"Are you sure?" Harry wrapped his arm around him and looked over his shoulder.

"I'm sure."

"All right." He kissed his cheek. "Let me know if there's anything wrong, though, okay? Tell me when things hurt. Don't keep things from me."

"I will," he promised, knowing he would not. It wasn't really a lie, it was just saying the things that Harry wanted to hear and the things that made things easiest. It didn't make anyone happy or anything easy to make Harry worry about things that didn't matter.

—-

When Draco woke, he was alone. He was cold, which could only mean he had been alone for a while. Something was wrong.

He dressed and left the room quietly, rubbing his arm without really noticing. The house was painfully quiet. He could hear the ticking clock downstairs all the way from Harry's room, he was trying so hard to hear anything… The made him sickly certain the house was empty. He didn't make a conscious decision to sneak around, but the silent house and his uneasiness had him creeping down the hall to check the other rooms, like he wasn't supposed to be there.

He couldn't find Harry or any sign of him, but he also couldn't be completely sure he had looked everywhere. Even the upper floor, it was possible he had skipped a room. There was something pathetic in the way he doubled back and checked again, unsure if he had looked in this room or that, and he was aware of it, but he felt helpless to do anything about it; he was stuck in a loop of checking rooms and then being afraid he had missed something for some time, until he left his room and found the stairs and ripped himself out of the cycle to go down them instead.

The loop was different and worse downstairs; the layout was more confusing, as upstairs he could see almost from one end to the other and downstairs felt like a rabbit warren he could never navigate. He tried. He followed halls and looked into rooms, looking for him, trying to fix in his mind the rooms he had checked but losing them almost immediately even so. He could spend hours doing this — the whole day. The feeling of his future stretching out before him in this endless purgatory was overwhelming, made it hard to breathe, and he had to figure out something else to do, but he didn't know what…

He stumbled upon the front door and looked around the area, looking for a sign that Harry had left, but if there was something new in the area he couldn't see it. He hesitantly reached out toward the door; he expected to feel stupid for his wariness, but he couldn't shake the feeling it would hurt. He barely tapped the wood with his fingertips and jerked away.

It was actually kind of surprising that he was right. The brief touch burned his fingertips and he held them against his stomach, looking blankly at the door.

So, what did that mean? That Harry hadn't left? He was here somewhere?

He pulled away from the door and went back to looking. Another round through the family tree room and the cold, empty kitchen. He was staring at the table and a pink bottle left there, presumably for him, when he sensed movement in the corner of his eye and jerked around in relief. "Har—"

There was no one there. There weren't many options for where he could have gone, though. He checked the door in the room — the tiny room with the pipes — and went back to the hall. "Harry?" No answer; he checked in the first room he came to, the starry dining room, and there was nothing, but he caught a glimpse of a dark figure just leaving the hallway as he closed the door, and he followed him at a quick limp. "Harry!"

When he got to the corner, he stopped and looked blankly down the other hall. It was empty, with no sign of him anywhere. Where…?

A sudden spike of pain through his arm made him cry out, and he doubled over it, clutching it. The dragon was burning hot to the touch.

He staggered back down the hall, away from the door; he meant to find a place to sit down, but the pain actually began fading away quickly, and it was all right again before he found anyplace to be. Still, that was so strange. He stared at the dragon as he caught his breath. It offered him nothing.

He rubbed it absently and turned his attention away. Looking for Harry was hopeless — he clearly didn't want to be found. So…

In a little bit, he found the stars in the dining room, and he made himself stop compulsively searching. Just stay there. That would be all right. He sat on the floor beside the open door and looked up at the false sky, trying to make himself feel better, trying not to worry or indulge in the fear picking at his mind like a carrion bird, ripping away pieces…

He looked up at the stars and tried to lose himself in them, trying to chase those good feelings of when he'd seen them for the first time, when Harry did that for him, but right now he knew that Harry was avoiding him, and they underlined that feeling instead. He tried to focus his mind on the good ones and push the bad ones back. Harry would be back and it would be all right. Or, maybe he wasn't actually even gone, and he would find him before much longer. Then he could be humiliated for these feelings, but it would be okay, he wouldn't be alone…

He had no way of knowing how long he sat there, tracing constellations in the ceiling, but it did calm him down. Not make him feel better, per se, but it occupied his mind and set him to thinking of something else. That didn't mean he wasn't instantly alert to the sound of the door opening down the hall. He instantly rolled onto his knees and then his feet; his branded arm gave out in a flare of pain and made him gasp, but he just used the other one to push himself to his feet and stepped out to look up the hall.

Harry came into view, looking at a large black envelope that was reminiscent of a Howler — used by bill collectors — instead of where he was going. He didn't notice him.

"Harry…" Draco's voice was undisguised relief. He stepped out and discreetly reached out to touch his arm.

Harry looked up, pulling the envelope away from him. "Oh, you're up. Eat something basic for lunch, I'll be out in a couple hours."

That dismissive brush-off reminded him that he was being clingy and annoying. He took his hand back. Right. "Is something wrong?"

"No, it's fine. Just busy." He turned off into the other sitting room, without the family tree.

"Is there anything I can—"

"Merlin, sod off," Harry snapped. "Everything isn't always about you."

He stopped short at the doorway. "I'm sorry," he murmured.

Harry didn't acknowledge that. "Shut the door," he said as he sat down with his post.

Draco silently stepped back and pulled the door shut between them. His stomach was in a knot. He hadn't meant to be irritating. He leaned back against the wall, holding his elbows, with his head leaning back to set his eyes on the ceiling.

The rooms had some muffling enchantments on them, relic of time as an Order base or maybe just older Pureblood paranoia; in his own home, rooms were Impervioused as a matter of course, refreshed as one of the yearly chores, along with the Muggle-repelling charms on the perimeter of the grounds… This could be the same. They might be wearing out, this many years later, because he could hear the sound of voices from inside. Not clearly, not enough to make out words, not like it would be without the muffling. But enough to know that wasn't just Harry's voice…

What did that mean?

He crept back down the hall and secreted himself in the starry room again, and this time he closed the door for extra security. He had an idea and it made him a bit scared to actually leave. It was a terrible, nonsense idea. There was no chance… but what if? What if he wasn't alone?

He kneaded the dragon in his arm and sneaked a look at the door, trying to control his breathing as it bordered on panic, trying not to go there, over that edge. He couldn't now shake off the feeling of being watched, the feeling that there was someone else in the house. The most terrible thing was that he knew it was possible. Maybe there was a room that Draco hadn't found because he couldn't figure out how the halls went together and he kept turning away before he reached it. Or they just stayed where he wasn't. Or he had just forgotten that he had seen signs of them. Harry could even have actually told him and he'd still forgotten. He didn't know, and he couldn't know. There could be this entire layer to his reality that he just hadn't noticed or had forgotten about. It felt like he was losing his grip on the shore and floating away in currents of uncertainty in water too murky to see his own feet, all because his mind just didn't work right.

Harry wouldn't do that, would he? Harry was trying to protect him. Harry didn't want anyone to know he was here.

But Harry could use allies. Friends. Or maybe there was someone else he needed to protect… So maybe…

A sudden memory struck him, of being in bed with someone else on top of him, someone that wasn't Harry, and he couldn't breathe. He held his head with his elbows on his knees, hands trembling. How could Harry do that…? He wouldn't have let someone else… Would he? He couldn't…

It wasn't even a conscious decision, but he couldn't handle that thought, and so his mind took control of himself and shut all of that down. Took hold of those emotions and put them away, out of reach, where he didn't have to feel them. He felt nothing. He was calm and focused. Maybe that had happened, and, if so, there was nothing he could do about it. He pushed himself to his feet and fixed the ribbon holding back his hair, then left the room because he should take care of necessities like eating.

Harry found him some time later organising the books in the family tree room, with the shelves emptied and the books currently in neat stacks while he wiped down the shelves so they would go back to a clean space. The feather duster was tapping along the ceiling to clean up the moulding.

"You took your potion. Good." Harry set his hand on Draco's back. "Bored?"

"They were out of order." He dug dust out of a shelf corner.

"All right." He took his hand from him and went to sit down.

Draco eventually stopped what he was doing and stood before the shelves, looking at them distantly. "Harry."

"Hm?"

"Is there someone else in this house? Or has there been?"

Harry got up without answering, and stepped around the books to get in front of him, squeezing between him and the shelves. Draco slowly looked at him, but didn't drop his eyes or take back the question. Harry was frowning and looked concerned.

When he didn't say anything, Harry touched his arm. "That's a very troubling question, Draco."

That wasn't a denial. He watched Harry evenly.

"Why are you asking that? I mean, why do you think there might be?"

"I've heard voices. I thought I saw someone, while you were out."

Harry shook his head and slowly rubbed his arm. "There's no one here. It's been just us." He kissed him lightly. "I wouldn't let anyone else in. That idea's insane."

Draco studied his face. "I think I remember… waking up… with someone else. He put me back to sleep with magic…"

Harry frowned a bit, looking into his face, and then his eyes widened. "Oh, shit, no, that was me. Just me." He held his face with both hands. "I didn't think you remembered… You were so asleep, it must have mixed with a dream. You only woke up for a second, I thought it wouldn't matter. Merlin, that must have been fucking with you, I'm sorry. It was always just me. It's all right."

Draco searched his face. "There's no one else here?"

"No, hell no. It's me and you. No one else, ever."

Draco studied him for any sign of a lie, but he seemed intent on that. He closed his eyes and let out his breath, and began to let himself feel again. Of course that didn't happen. Of course Harry didn't let that happen. He raised his hand and held onto Harry's silently.

—-

Falling asleep. It was warm and quiet. The weight of Harry's arm around him. Floating distantly on pain relief and Dreamless Sleep.

A sudden high, cold voice stabbed at him from the doorway. "Enjoying yourself, Draco…?"

He shot upright with a shriek muffled by the hand he clamped over his mouth, scrambling his way up the bed away from the door, arm throbbing, eyes darting over the room, searching for Him, trying to get out of Harry's hands that were trying to hold him down.

"Draco!" Something grabbed his arms, tried to pin him down, and that made him struggle more wildly until he fell out of the bed.

Harry swore and lit the lamp by the bed, throwing the room into warm light and gentle shadows. It was empty. Draco's eyes darted from corner to shadow to doorway, searching for Him, but He wasn't there.

"Draco?" Harry leaned over the edge of the bed and offered him his hand.

He looked at the hand briefly, then back into the room, holding his aching arm. "He was here…"

"Who?"

"You Know Who."

"I don't know… Voldemort?" Harry groaned and dropped his face into the bed. "You had a dream, Draco."

"I just had a Dreamless Sleep!"

"You think it's more likely a dead guy showed up in your bedroom than you had a weird half-a-nightmare while you were falling asleep? Come on." He leaned forward to grab his arm and pull him up.

Draco let himself be pulled, and sat on the bed, but he couldn't stop looking. Obviously, Harry's suggestion made a lot more sense, but it had seemed so real. He'd had nightmares about Him for ages, he knew what those felt like, and this wasn't that. He could swear that he could reach out and touch Him, how could something that real be in his head?

Darkness on his arm in the corner of his eye made him flinch, but it was just the dragon, not the Dark Mark. He covered it with his hand anyway, as much as his half hand could cover something that covered his whole forearm.

"Come on, back to sleep." Harry put out the light again and pushed his shoulder so he'd lie down, pulling the blankets up over him. "No more bad dreams," he murmured into the back of his neck.

He hoped he was right. He didn't think he'd be sleeping after that, though.

Dreamless Sleep pulled him to sleep despite himself.

—-

The deck kept throwing The Moon. About a third of his draws from the deck, it seemed, found him staring at a full white moon silhouetting pillars and a mooncalf. By those odds, the deck should have about twenty Moons.

He stared at the card pensively, bracing it between his fingers by two corners, flipping it slowly round and round. The mooncalf and kelpie flickered as he turned it. The more he looked at the card, the more he became convinced that the kelpie wasn't a danger lurking under the surface of the pool, waiting to snatch the mooncalf when it came close enough. The kelpie was the reflection of the mooncalf. The moonlight was exposing the dangerous predator disguised as something harmless.

He heard Harry moving in the hall, and he stood up, sliding the cards into his pocket and checking his bed was neat. His arm ached the whole time but he hardly noticed it, just enough to not aggravate it. Hair neatly tied, seams straight, sleeve rolled up so Harry could see the dragon, because he seemed to like it.

The door came unlocked and Harry pushed it fully open. He didn't seem angry; his body language was loose and relaxed. "Your hair's come out," was the first thing he said.

"Sorry." He immediately pulled the ribbon out to try to redo it, though it was difficult with his hands. His cheeks were warm and embarrassed; it shouldn't be hard to do even that much right.

"It's all right." Harry came in and took the ribbon from him. "I'll help you." He pulled his hair back.

"Thank you…" He looked out the doorway while Harry did that for him, but with no designs on it. He could not actually remember why he was in his room, but he did know he was meant to stay there.

"There." Harry kissed his nose lightly, and he wrinkled it in response. "Come keep me company while I fix supper."

"All right." He held Harry's hand, walking close to him, as Harry led him downstairs.

In the kitchen, Harry set him to setting out dishes for them to eat while he warmed up the roast and veg. He had to look in several cupboards before he found them, like he always did, but he did find them, and then he made several trips, one flat-dish at a time; he didn't like to be so inefficient, but his arm hurt and he thought he would drop something. Being aware of that enough to formulate the plan to make several trips instead of trying anyway and causing things to get broken did actually feel like an embarrassing step in the right direction. Maybe the brewing exercises for his mind were paying off.

He was setting up glasses for them when he raised his eyes to find a horrible, flat white face, bright red eyes, and a cruel smirk, looking right into his eyes.

He shrieked and staggered backwards, knocking dishes to the ground, running into Harry and clutching at him. The Dark Lord rose to his feet with the delicately controlled movements he always had, and he didn't disappear, and he didn't look away from Draco's face. He stepped around the table and toward him, unblinking and almost playful gaze fixed on him. "It's been some time, Draco…"

"Draco!" Harry grabbed his shoulders and shook him. It sounded like that wasn't the first time he tried to call him.

He clung desperately to Harry's arms and shirt. "He's here!" he gibbered wildly, like he couldn't see that for himself, half sobbing. "He's—!" He flung his arm toward the stalking figure.

The Dark Lord was gone. There was no sign of him.

"There's no one there!" Harry pulled his arm back down. "What are you talking about?"

"He's… He was…"

He cut himself off with a gasp as pain suddenly surged through his arm. He pulled free of Harry and held it, trying to breathe through it.

The pain didn't fade this time, it only redoubled. It spiked into something like a Cruciatus, localised entirely within his forearm, and he cried out, doubled over, clutching at it.

"Draco!" Draco staggered to his knees, holding his arm, and Harry was there with him, trying to pull his hand free. He yanked his hand back with a hiss when he found that the dragon brand was searing hot. Draco was almost crying over the pain. The actual ink in his arm was bubbling and hissing, right over the top of the Dark Mark.

Harry desperately yanked out his wand and tried a series of healing spells, to no avail. Nothing provided so much as a hint of relief. "It's him…" Draco sobbed, with his arm stretched out away from him.

"No, it's all right, we'll fix it…" Harry set his face in a determined expression and cast another spell.

That made Draco scream again and shove away from him, sobbing and shaking his head. It felt like his arm was on fire again, but this time it wasn't stopping. He dug his fingernail into the skin like he could rip it off — that was the only thing that could help.

Harry followed him and yanked his arm free of his hand to see. "Merlin…" He looked up with horror.

"Make it stop!"

"I don't think I can…" Harry hugged his head against his chest, holding his hand out to stop him clawing at it. He sobbed desperately into him. Something had to help it…

"Did you really think you could be rid of Lord Voldemort, Draco?"

He flinched away from the voice. The pain sudden exploded and he could feel nothing else, thought he could distantly hear himself screaming.

The pain broke with terrifying suddenness, there for a small eternity and then suddenly almost gone; he was tense and sore, his throat hurt from screaming and there was pain in his arm from hitting and scratching it, but it was normal, not the all-consuming magical pain. He was wrapped up in Harry's arms, sprawled on the floor, and he didn't want to move.

Harry lifted his head with a gentle hand, and Draco reluctantly opened his eyes, looking at him helplessly, hoping he knew what to do to fix it.

"I thought you passed out," Harry admitted, and hugged him. "Has it stopped?"

He nodded and rested his forehead against Harry's chest.

Harry rubbed his back calmly for a bit, then picked up his arm and turned it up. Draco could feel him grow tense and the grip on his arm tighten.

He lifted his head to see. "Don't look," Harry warned, but he had to.

The Dark Mark was back, as bad as it ever had been. The ink in the dragon had been… what, pushed back? Or maybe absorbed? Consumed? There was a space of clear skin an inch in every direction around the edges of the Dark Mark, outlining it within the dragon, and now instead of the faded grey it had been, it was as black as the brand, as black as it ever had been when the Dark Lord was right there, as black as the day it had been put on him…

He reached out with his shaking hand to touch it, hoping it was some trick, it couldn't be real. Even the scar tissue of the brand was gone now, leaving the Mark sunken and flawlessly smooth in the middle of it.

He barely managed to scramble out of Harry's arms before he started retching.

Harry followed him and rubbed his back; he stood up and came back with a glass of water and Vanished the mess. Draco leaned against him weakly, tears leaking out of his eyes.

"When you've been imagining him, it must have been his magic working to reassert itself." Harry ran his hand over his hair. "I didn't realise; I feel like such a prick. I thought it was just you being…"

He didn't finish it and Draco didn't care. "He'll never be gone…" He woodenly pushed his sleeve down to hide the Mark.

Harry didn't answer, because it was true. What could he possibly say? But he held him close and kissed his head.

#whump writing #whumpcember2023 #whumpcember2023 day 15 #hallucinations #writing #not a prompt whumpitlikeyoumeanit #whumpitlikeyoumeanit wrote it #voldemort whumper #draco whumpee #dark mark #unreality

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