On The Run
Pop!
Once he landed after Apparating with Professor Snape, Draco Malfoy began to run as fast as he could. He had no idea where he would go or what he was looking for but the boy knew he just had to run and do it now.
Draco’s breath was catching in his throat and he could hear his heart beating hard in his chest. Looking behind him, he saw that he had lost his mentor and mentally prayed to whoever was out there for the Professor to have good luck wherever he landed. The man who had taken him under his wing during the past six years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was now no longer in Draco’s line of sight. He wondered if he would ever see the Professor again.
He slowed down to a jog and eventually felt that if he ran any more, he would collapse and never wake again. Draco stopped abruptly on the dark gravel road and curved over to catch his breath. He stood bracing himself with his hands on his knees which were bent, trying to regain control of his breathing. Once he was able to make the queasiness subside, he broke down emotionally. Realising he was completely isolated in the middle of this deserted road hit him like a ton of bricks.
I feel so alone right now. I have nowhere to go for help and even if I did, no one in their right mind would take me in. I almost murdered the Headmaster this evening!
The thoughts were flying through Draco’s mind and he felt himself slowly losing control. Feeling the bile rise in the back of his throat, he collapsed onto the gravel road in defeat, rocking himself while he cried. Twenty-four hours ago, he was ready to end the life of the old man and not only that, but he had been excited as well! Now the image burned in the forefront of his mind of Dumbledore’s body laying below the Astronomy tower made his body shake. By this point he was crying so hard he was coughing, trying to breathe.
He did not know what good it would do to get emotional like this but it felt better than screaming when there was no one to hear him. Emotions that he had kept bottled up for so long were finally surfacing and Draco did not hold anything back.
Scenes from the evening began to fly through his subconscious and he began to ask himself where things began to go so utterly wrong.
The Death Eaters. I never should have led them onto the school grounds. Had I thought it through, I would have seen how disastrous it would have ended. No good could have ever come from tonight’s plans…
Draco began to wipe his eyes, trying to get a hold of emotions. He knew that if he was found in his current condition, the Dark Lord would make it ten times worse. He would give him something to truly cry about, most likely in the form of the Cruciatus curse. By this point, he was almost hyperventilating but the tears had finally ceased. Draco’s entire body was shaking at the thoughts of what would happen if he ever found his way to the Dark Lord again.
Laughter.
Ridicule.
Scorn.
He would be the mockery of the Death Eaters, assuming he lived long enough to see them laughing at him. A simple task – the Headmaster was unarmed, for Merlin’s sake! Professor Dumbledore was practically taunting him, telling him to get his job over with because, as he had reminded Draco several times during their conversation, he had been rendered wandless.
Draco felt like a failure. He failed his master and he failed his family name as well. The Malfoy name was something to be proud of. It was held in both fear as well as high regard throughout the wizarding world.
My father’s reaction.
The thought of it made his stomach turn. Lucius was already locked up in Azkaban. The Dementors feed off of the prisoners emotions, which, until now, Draco assumed his father could keep a pretty good hold of. If Lucius had gotten word of his son’s failure to carry out his task, he had a hunch his father might actually go crazy and allow the gloom of the prison to get to him.
It was very un-Malfoy like but then again, so was failure. Draco did not think his night could get much worse. Of course, if you asked Lucius, thinking was not something Draco excelled in, either.
Standing up, he felt as if he were suddenly no longer alone. Blinking hard a few times, he thought he began to imagine a green glow coming from somewhere behind him but it soon vanished. He turned around and jumped as he was greeted by an eerie green glow coming from a building which, he could swear, was not there a minute ago. He blinked, believing that he had most certainly lost his mind now, as places don’t just appear out of nowhere.
The Green Dragon.
From the outside, the building looked as if it were hundreds of years old but not in an antique sort of way. It made him think about a large shack, if there was such a thing.
It reminds me of somewhere that Weasley might live.
Draco laughed to himself and then for the first time he felt a twinge of guilt for thinking such thoughts about his red-haired classmate. Looking around, Draco wondered if he too would have to resort to that sort of lifestyle after tonight’s incident. He shuddered at the thought and forced it out of his mind for the time being. He felt his survival instinct kick back in and in one fluid motion, he had his wand in his hand. He suspected that if there was a building, there would most likely be people inside.
Draco observed his new surroundings and came to realise a few things. First and foremost, he was absolutely exhausted. It was getting difficult to ignore his aching joints. The building, magic or not, did not seem to be an inn as much as a simple pub which implied that sleep on an actual bed may still not be in his immediate future. Seeing that there was the possibility of food beyond the doors in front of him gave way to a second thought and that was the fact that he was starving. A low gurgling noise came from somewhere deep within the realms of his stomach and he began feeling queasy again. He was fairly certain that this time the nausea he was fighting was from hunger issues and not nerves.
Weighing his odds of running into a ministry official out in the middle of nowhere, Draco took a cleansing breath and walked cautiously towards the large mahogany door. As he took each step, he could hear the sounds of the gravel crunching beneath his shoes and far off in the distance, he heard the sounds of crickets chirping. He could not understand how the world can go on in such harmony after a night like the one he had just taken part in and he cursed the crickets for singing their song.
As he reached out to grab the brass handle, he stepped back to watch it open on its own. Seeing that this was indeed a magical place, Draco was not sure if he should feel better or more on guard. He opted for the latter. It was too soon after the fiasco at school to let his guard down.
On The Run by NikkiSue
Chapter Notes: This story is for the New Years Challenge under the prompt "At the Sign of the Green Dragon".
I am NikkiSue and I am from the house of Slytherin.