This is basically an angsty one-shot to explain Draco’s captivity in “A Challenge.” Some facts are different (Ginny’s occupation, things like that) but it’s the same idea….
Well, this doesn't have any reviews, nor does it have many reads... Sadly...
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In Captivity
He wondered how he’d ended up here. He deluded himself into thinking he didn’t know. He knew. He knew why he was in some sort of expansive underground cave. He was surprised he wasn’t dead, frankly. He was also surprised to find he didn’t want to be dead. Yet. He felt it coming, felt his spirit cracking and being crushed into submission. He hoped he’d die before he showed weakness.
The room was dark; well, that was not unusual. Death Eaters liked their lairs dark, notoriously so. His face was on the slick ground; his cheek had begun to feel slimy. He heard some sort of bat or bird fluttering. He kept his eyes closed against the feeling that was pressing, pulsing through his eyeballs. He hoped that sleep would come dreamlessly for once, to bring a short healing period before he’d be beaten again.
That was new to him. Despite the fact that his father, Lucius, was infamous for cruelty and possibly insanity, Draco had never been tortured before. But now his arms felt as though they had been bitten on every possible part. His shirt had once been white, but it was gray and shredded and hung in tatters. Not that it mattered, the light was too dull to see anything other than gray. He could have tried to stand, but it would not have helped. His legs were weaker than brittle dust. His throat was bitter and itchy and his tongue tasted like metal.
Why was he there? He knew. He’d been too slow to promise his eternal existence to Voldemort, so Voldemort decided he would have to kill the annoying little misfit. He was a bother. His friends all kept saying, “Join up soon or wind up dead.” Even death was growing more appealing than a bitter-hewn hell. He’d been a fool to try to follow the path that made sense. He should have realized that blind loyalty and a life committed to fighting were the only options.
Just because he’d always been a spoiled little bastard didn’t mean he wasn’t rational. But he was also shivering, dirty, and alone in some basement cave.
All too often he thought of her. He found it pathetic, but it was all he could do. He could barely move, was practically starved, and the only thing that made it relatively pleasant was deluding himself into thinking she cared.
He’d long ago realized he loved her. He was a Malfoy, and he was not supposed to love. He loved her. He did. He loved her and he was helpless to do anything for it.
Someone kicked his foot gently. First gentle movement he’d felt in a while. He kept his eyes shut, and his imagination focused on her. He saw her long, showering curtain of red hair. He saw her eyes spark with danger as she argued with him. He saw her brush off his advances. He saw her shrug off other people’s attention when she came back from Auror training, hurt and limping. He watched her stand up for people who had no chance of winning. He watched her smile in his direction. He watched her scream. He watched her hug her brothers and her parents. He watched her fly.
He looked, in his mind, at the long scar that dotted a thin line through the skin around her eye. She actually liked that gash of a scar. She’d earned that scar. It made her look tough, not that she needed it. People already knew her capabilities. Her hexes were almost unimaginable; they were gorgeous. She was too, though he didn’t want to admit it.
She would very likely be mad at him. He could almost laugh about it; she would scold him for getting kidnapped, if only to hide her feelings. What if he died? What if she thought he was dead? WAS he dead?
No, the nudging of his foot by someone assured him he was alive. He wished he could laugh at the situation facing him, but there was no possible way. His chest barely held enough air was it was, he hadn’t spoken in weeks, and he was using his energy thinking of her.
Maybe he was weak, for thinking of her. He’d probably gone soft, for not being a Voldemort supporter. It had just seemed too stupid a move for him to consider doing it. Maybe that was his downfall, listening to whatever it was that other people considered a “conscience.” When people around him threatened to kill him, he’d though the most logical person to go to would be Snape. Trouble was, Draco hadn’t been sure where Snape’s loyalties were. So Draco went to Dumbledore, even though the man was completely barmy. Yet he was surprisingly able, considering Draco he was on his last legs.
Dumbledore promised Draco sanctuary. Dumbledore had made it impossible for anyone to harass Draco, without making anything look suspicious or conspicuous. He’d made things too hard for ‘everyone else’ to accomplish anything without being found out, so everyone had stayed low, making Draco’s life easier, considering.
So Draco felt a grudging debt of respect and loyalty to the old man. It had made Draco’s transition into ‘respectable’ a bit easier, as well. It had made his transition into ‘Ginny’s new man’ a hell of a lot simpler, too. It had made Draco’s tiffs with Harry, Hermione, and Ron much less violent and seething as well.
Maybe it made some things easier, but it’d made life shitty, that much was sure. Which sort of counteracted any happiness Ginny afforded him. And now he had no news of anything outside his dungeon, let alone of her, so he was left with the bottled happiness he already had inside him. He hoped it wouldn’t grow stale.
He felt someone push at his foot again. “We got a live one!” a voice said gleefully.
‘Shit,’ thought Draco. This was what he’d almost been dreading. But death was inevitable.
He would have liked to see Ginny once more before she forgot him.
His body jerked upwards, and he would have howled with torment if he’d been able. He could barely gasp as it was. He was being levitated somewhere, and the person had not taken into account the fact that his internal organs were almost melded together and his back was likely broken.
“Oh my God, be more careful. Support his head better. Careful!” a different voice called. Draco felt his body straighten out, his body that felt like fire, and he tried to open his eyes. That, dear Lord, was not what he had been expecting. Clearly he wasn’t fucking dead yet. He was able to squint through the murky gloom. He tried to open his mouth; it barely cracked open. He tried to lick his lips and managed as well as he could.
His eyes showed him a head near his right. The head had hair on it that, in the strange light, looked bottle-green. Something was seriously wrong with this scenario. There was no apparent threat on his life this time. This caused him to struggle even more; he wanted away, something wasn’t right.
They weren’t going to kill him.
A face moved towards him. “He’s-- he’s awake. Put him down! He looks pale as death.” Draco’s body was put on the ground more gently than it had been lifted into the air. He felt someone grappling at his clothing, and had no strength to be embarrassed or to resist. Someone tore open his shirt, perhaps to survey the damage. He knew there was damage. Spells and hexes like he’d been subjected to didn’t leave a person unblemished for long. They’d wanted information, and he hadn’t had any.
“We have to heal him now. Now. He’s going. Mr. Malfoy. Mr. Malfoy! Stay with us. Open your eyes. Open them.” But he couldn’t open them anymore. His eyelids scratched as he felt them close. And then he didn’t feel a thing.
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He’d been on a reconnaissance mission much like the one those Aurors and healers were on, the one to save him. But he’d been after children. Little children. Barely at the age of reason-- barely seven, barely eight. He was able to save some, the mediwizards and mediwitches were able to heal them, but there were others. He was sure there were others. After he’d been hexed, after he passed out and woke up not knowing where he was, he was sure others had been killed. He knew others had been killed, because people had tried to save them. He knew the logic-- ‘Don’t try to escape or we’ll kill ten others if you do.’ Intimidation. Fear. Self-preservation. Nothing resembling pity.
Unlike the person quietly tugging at his shoulders right now, willing him to stay alive. His back had been healed, the marks on his arms and chest could wait, but he needed to be alive. He wrenched his eyes away from scenes of death and he saw-- the cave. He saw the same dank room he’d been in for months, maybe years now. He could never tell, he’d been there for much too long to have hung on to the part of him that told time. Goddamn it, he was still in that dungeon room, that hellhole.
But this time, he saw a face, hanging dreadfully near his in the gloom. A beaming face. “You’re alright. You’ll be okay. Stay with me this time. I need you alert. You’ll be fine, Mr. Malfoy, just stay with me.” The one with green hair. He saw it actually was green, it wasn’t just the light. He wondered why a person would dye her hair green. Such a peculiar shade, too. Sort of emerald.
At times of great strain or confusion, Draco had a certain skill at backing away from the world and shutting himself into an observatory box. He could see out but nothing could get in. Nothing could touch him. No feelings could worm in at the sides, nothing could find him there. It was a strange form of delusion and denial, but it tended to work.
“Draco,” the witch said. She snapped her fingers a few inches from his face. “Draco Malfoy. I know you’re in there somewhere, you’re not going anywhere. Stay alert. Keep a look on my eyes, my nose, anything. Don’t go anywhere.” She turned away, sitting up on her knees and twisting her head. “He’s fading fast. Can anyone help me?” She turned back to him. “No way, you’re not going anywhere. You’re strong enough to handle this. We’ve healed your back.” She looked at him and her nostrils flared. It wasn’t working. She took him by the shoulders again, and put her face near his own. “I don’t want to do this. Don’t make me do this.” Was she still talking? She was. He wanted her to shut up so he could die in peace. He could feel himself slipping away. He closed his eyes. Suddenly there was a disgusting sensation, a sickeningly warm feeling, right on the center of his cracked and dry lips.
Draco opened his eyes again. Was she kissing him? Why was she kissing him? He didn’t want her to kiss him. Who WAS she? Why was she kissing him? Was he kissing her back? No. What the hell was she doing, kissing him? Did she know who he was? Really, what the hell was she doing? What the hell was going on? What the hell in general?
He tried to push at her shoulder, but he was still feeble. She pulled back gladly, looking at him with a strange glee. “What…” he tried to croak, but not even that came out.
“Don’t look at me like that. I was not trying to take advantage. I was trying to keep you from dying. You stopped breathing. Don’t look indignant. It’s my job to save you. Just listen to me, I’m going to keep talking, alright? Stay with me.” He tried to tell her to shut up but his mouth was too dry. “We’ll have you out of this place any second, sir. I’m not going to stop talking. Focus on how annoying that is. If you go anywhere near that bright light at the end of the tunnel, it’s going to be hard to bring you back. Don’t you want to see her again? I know you do. You miss her, right?” She looked at him as though she knew exactly what he was going through. She was infuriating him. “I’m sure after being in this shithole for about a year and a half you want nothing more than her. I know that. But first you need out of here, then you need water, then you need more medical attention than we have applied so far. Hey, hey,” she said, snapping her fingers again. Draco had begun to look past her shoulder and off into the distance, thinking of Ginny. “Get back here. You’re going to be fine, Mr. Malfoy. We thought you were dead. A lot of people stopped looking. Even when we found you, you looked dead. You’ll need some psychiatric care. Have you heard any news from the world since you’ve been imprisoned here? I thought not. Voldemort’s gone, sir. He’s gone. Alright, Mr. Malfoy. We’re going to move you now. Brace yourself, Draco.”
How did she know his name?
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He was healed physically. He let himself be healed. He let people take care of him, so that he could return to her, to Ginny. The Death Eaters had done quite a job of messing him up. The psychiatric help was more than necessary. Little surprise there. He’d also needed therapy for his back, and his scars had actually healed without leaving much of a trace. He was slowly able to talk again, then able to talk about what had happened. Stubborn as that he was, some things he just didn’t do willingly. They kept him on suicide watch for quite some time. He slowly regained the ability to judge time accurately. He began to eat again, and for once in the longest time, it didn’t hurt to lay down. All of his bones weren’t visible through his very thin and pale skin any more. He’d regained weight; he no longer weighed less than a child. The bright light of the hospital no longer bothered him. His eyes had finally adjusted to it. Being near people still tended to startle him, as did loud noises.
No one knew he was in the hospital. They all thought he was dead.
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He was able to stand up straight. His hair had grown in. He actually managed to like the sunshine (something he’d never been quite fond of even before his imprisonment). His scars were gone. He talked easily and willingly. His weight had reached the full measure he’d had before his kidnapping, but less of it was muscle. He no longer felt continuously thirsty. He liked being near people (also something he’d never been fond of, before). He needed to be near people. He felt sane. He almost felt whole. He was working on feeling whole again. It was roughly two and a half years after he’d been spirited away. He stood straighter and brushed the hair from his forehead.
He stood on Ginny’s front step, and he knocked on the door.