His Withered Soul by Ron x Hermione
Chapter Notes: Thanks so much to my wonderful beta, Colores/Fresca! This was written in response to the June Challenge. Please enjoy!
Note to Andrea: Oh, gosh, I do not think that you're picking on me! I'm glad that you're challenging me to keep on improving it and improving it. Thanks so much for putting up with my endless submissions.
Dementors slid across the ground like ghosts, feeling their way through the air with their scent, sucking on anything, anything at all that pertained to happiness. The prisoners felt it.
They were excited about something.
Everything in the prison was dead; roaches crawled across the murky, sodden floors, disbelieving that this was actually a human’s quarters and not their own. Grimy toilets sat in the corners of the cells, untouched by anyone but the criminals that rested there, and that was only once or twice a day. There was a small amount to deposit if there was little or nothing to eat.
All of the inmates were dirty and they smelled, not to mention they were so emaciated that their ribs protruded from their empty stomachs and chests.
Death filled the air. A person died nearly every day in Azkaban. Whether it be because they were sentenced, because the happiness was so long gone from them that their will to live faded, or it was because their nourishment was just so undernourished, only the prisoner knew--- but they died a painful, slow death from starvation or dehydration if there was no set execution date.
Draco Malfoy had been wasting away in this place for nearly a year now. He had been sentenced one year in Azkaban before his true punishment--- a date with the Dementors who would ultimately suck his soul out.
His eyes were sunk nearly all the way through his face, his pallid skin now a white-grey. His eyes, once so lively and dancing with childlike simplicity in his younger days at Hogwarts now sat in their hollow spaces, cold and aged. His tattered clothes had been the same ones he had been in since his first day imprisoned here.
And tomorrow would be the anniversary of that first day.
A Ministry official, someone he recognised as Percy Weasley, had already been by to warn him of the consequences he was to face soon.
He looked so nourished opposite Draco. He appeared positively obese compared to the poor man that had been trapped in the place. While Draco had sat in the boredom for the past year with less than a piece of bread each day, Percy had been absorbing himself in many a feast for his latest promotions in the Ministry each month as he climbed his way up the social ladder. He still hadn’t made peace with his family and that made Draco want to strangle him. If you had someone, then why not cherish him or her and live your life to the fullest?
Draco had no family left; his father had perished long before he had come to Azkaban, and Voldemort had murdered his mother at his own consequence. He lived, everyday, in memory of that night. Death was so cruel, as were the Death Eaters and Voldemort. He had had to watch her be tortured. She had died from many casts of the Cruciatus Curse. He, Draco, wasn’t important enough to be murdered himself by the Dark Lord, so he sat in his cell every day contemplating on why he had become such a failure and how he could have allowed his mother to be killed and not himself.
Percy’s horn-rimmed glasses had sat perched atop his nose that day, a grin slowly spreading onto his lips as he glimpsed the emaciated boy that now lay there. He had been told that he was to be executed in three days, and someone would travel back to warn him of it that day.
As soon as the man had left, he had pushed her back to his mind’s eye, breathing a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been caught.
Pansy.
He thought of her every day. Every hour. Every moment. It was impossible not to just wallow in sad or terrible memories when you were stationed here; there was nothing to do in the cell but count the tiles, count the hours, or think. Since the tiles had already been counted and marked over a thousand times inside his head with no exaggeration or mistake, he thought. Counting the time just made it go by that much more dawdling.
Nothing here was happy except her. He stared at her face in his mind’s eye every moment, never letting go. He always forced himself to push it to the back of his mind so the Dementors couldn’t steal it as they travelled by, patrolling the grounds. That was his last bit of happiness, her happy figure dancing inside his head. It was a surprise that he hadn’t gone mad by now; if he hadn’t had her, he would have certainly have begged them mercy to kill him now and not a year after. But, he still clung to her tattered picture in his brain, weeping in grief every time he would think of her. He didn’t deserve her. He really, truly didn’t. She waited for him, while he sat in the cold depths of Azkaban Prison for a crime he didn’t commit in the first place. He would always bring back her face as soon as the Dementors were gone, heaving a sigh of relief from his emotions of her absence. He was like a leech, sucking on her blood as he thought of her. He had to have her, or he would perish. He loved her that much.
But he had told Pansy that he would return to her. And he would keep that promise.
How he was going to do that, he didn’t necessarily know, but he did know that with a little endeavour and enterprise, he could accomplish anything. Even getting out of Azkaban to be with the one he loved.
~ * ~
“Draco Malfoy, you are hereby sentenced in exactly one hour to receive the Dementor’s Kiss,” the Ministry official read, a smirk playing on his lips just as Weasley’s had. This was a different man--- a stouter version of Weasley, but with the same leering expression and glasses. This man didn’t need an invitation to be callous, he just was. Every word that burst forth from him was spat at Draco; he positively chuckled when he told him that he was going to be executed in an hour.
Draco just shook his head, tears springing to his eyes as the man had read that horrid piece of parchment. He had never lied to Pansy before, and never, ever wanted to. But his promise to return to her as a free man was slowly diminishing with each ticking moment. He had exactly one hour to escape.
By the time the official had finished speaking, he asked Draco if he had come to terms with his punishment. Draco slowly nodded, and the executive took hold of him by the scruff of his frayed shirt.
“No, you will never come to terms with it, do you hear me? You’re going to be punished for all of those people you killed. You deserve to be tortured.” Small droplets of spittle clung to Draco’s face from the angry man, and he spit himself to get it off his lips.
“What do you think this place is?” Draco asked. His words were calm, yet they made the man back up. Draco took a step in reverse as well.
“It’s prison. It’s nothing compared to what you’re about to get.” The man gave another signature grin and pushed Draco against the wall before walking out of the cell and slamming the door back into its place, locking it.
But as soon as the man was out of sight and Draco could no longer hear the dull clip-clop of his tailored shoes on the stone floor, Draco showed his own grin.
For he now had a long, wooden object in his hand. He rolled it between his fingers, his plan coming into full action.
The Ministry official had lost his wand.
~ * ~
“One hour has passed.” It was amusing how quickly the time passed when you actually have something to do. Thinking of a way out had made Draco forget the time, and the next thing he knew, two people stood in front of his cell. He peered through the bars cautiously.
A bell swung back and forth somewhere in the distance, its rings piercing through the foggy air. It wasn’t a cheerful sound like a wedding or church bell, but a ring that almost mourned for the prisoners. It was stationed just outside of Azkaban, and it rang every time a prisoner was killed.
Draco pushed himself into the back of the fortification, his heart pounding like mad in his chest in fear. He could feel the Dementor’s icy grip swallowing him. They were only down the hall. There were only a few of them; only one was needed, really; there wasn’t enough life or joyfulness left inside any prisoner to need any more than one creature, but they wanted to share the death amongst themselves equally.
Draco pressed against the wall, feeling the thin protection of the wand in his back pocket, smiling slowly and softly as they came near. He was going to use his last wonderful memory to stop his execution. That is, if he even had one. There was some barrier between his mind and Pansy’s memories, forcing him to contemplate on other things, things that did not matter at this moment at all.
Another Ministry official stood by the cell, watching him with an evil stare, and a woman dressed in lavish clothes stood next to him, weeping. Her blonde but greying hair was twisted into a bun and her face was red and her eyes puffy. She was extremely thin; she didn’t look as if she had eaten much in a while. Draco felt a twinge inside him that made him feel as if he knew the woman, but he didn’t know why she was there or why she was crying with such intensity. Was she expressing such grief because she knew that he was going to breathe his last breath in just a few moments, even if she didn’t know him?
Either way, she was wrong. Draco Malfoy was not going to die today. Not by the hand of the Dementors.
The Dementors came slowly to his cell, taunting him with great joy. Their black hoods caressed their faces and they slowly made their way inside. The cell was rather large for one man, and they stood on one side while Draco sat, cowering in a corner with that last bit of happiness somewhere in the back of his psyche. He tried to allow him to access her picture, but it wasn’t working. They were too close.
The Dementors were coming closer. He could see their hideous lips, sucking on the air as if it were crimson blood. Draco still sat there, his eyes closed and searching through his mind for the memory.
He pulled out the wand.
“Don’t come any closer,” he told them bravely, taking another inch backward. He now was arched against the wall, his eyes larger and more afraid than they had been. The Dementors just came nearer.
Draco started reliving memories . . . the worst memories utterly possible and a silent tear rolled down his cheek as his knees sank to the ground and he dropped the wand. It rolled only a few inches away from him, within his grasp, but he didn’t want to look up. He didn’t want to see his death coming. He mustered a sob as the memory was forced into his mind: the memory of his mother’s death.
Screams penetrated the silent air and he found himself trying to cover his ears. He was in a corner of a small, extravagant room. The living room in his parent’s manor that he had grown up in as a child. The scene seemed merry. . . until he turned the other way. There he was, sitting in a corner, his hands covering his ears as sobs shook his body on the floor beneath him. He leaned over onto his side and retched, sending a delivery of disgusting liquid onto the floor, filling the air with a rather foul smell. He took it all in into his nostrils, trying not to heave again.
When he finally found the courage and his sickness had passed, he dared to look up and into the cold, hatred-filled eyes of Voldemort.
“I told you that this would be coming, Draco,” he said coldly, his eyes narrowing at him first before allowing a smirk to illuminate his ghostly features. He then turned to Narcissa Malfoy, Draco’s mother, and pulled out his wand.
“Crucio,” he said softly, his evil laughter bellowing above his mother’s terrified screams. Her body writhed and twitched on the wooden floor, her head banging into it with great force. Fairly soon, blood trickled out of her lips and her eyes began to fade.
”Draco! Draco, help me. My son . . .” she managed to mutter between spurts of the curse, her eyes rolling back in her head. Her screams were becoming quieter and quieter with every passing hex, and fairly soon she was still. Voldemort laughed evilly, loudly. Draco’s mother lay still, unmoving. Her blue eyes just stared up at him, glistening in the light of the illumination of Voldemort’s wand. They knew that he, Draco, had been the one to do this to him. He ran over to her, but before she could be reached he was blasted over to the other side of the room with a curse of a nature he did not know. Voldemort cackled again, sending shots of the same spell that had killed his mother at him.
They were coming closer . . .
Terrible memories of his were suddenly being forced to his mind, and he couldn’t take it. He sat there on the floor, expressing his grief, his sobs wracking his thin frame as the Dementors took another glide closer. One of them was coming for the wand, two--- for him.
But he suddenly remembered his one torn, frayed bit of happiness inside his mind. He remembered the promise. He remembered Pansy. But she was only shining through a fraction of his mind. It was comical how he couldn’t picture her when he actually needed that image in his mind; Dementors fed on happy memories and that picture of Pansy was all he possessed. He had nothing else. He would just have to try harder.
With a newfound valour, Draco picked up the wand that had rolled the few inches away and stood up, tall and straight, pointing it at the Dementors.
“Expecto Patronum,” he said, his words becoming slurred as he realised how really close they were. He had never practised the curse before, never needing it, so he was not so surprised when what he wanted to happen didn’t happen. A small wisp of smoke was issued, but nothing more. Draco could see their slimy, glistening hands and his breath from the cold they exuded. He wanted to do it, to stay alive, if only for her and not himself. They were reaching for him slowly, teasingly. He just had to keep fighting.
Pansy sat in the farthest corner of the room, her brown eyes shining with unshed tears as she watched her lover, her Draco Malfoy take the stand in the front of the courtroom in chains, his eyes narrowing and his thin lips formed in a grim line. He only stared at her with an intense feeling of belonging in his heart, then turned around to meet the judge’s eyes.
“Draco Malfoy, you have been accused of being involved in Death Eater activity. How do you plead?”
Draco took a fleeting look at Pansy, who seemed to know his answer, but didn’t want to accept it.
“I . . .”
“The evidence is overwhelming. Mr. Malfoy, please don’t make my job any harder than it already is. Did you or did you not communicate with You-Know-Who and kill three innocent Muggles?”
Draco’s eyes squinted as he looked up at the bright light above him, realising that these would be his last stares of freedom before he told the man the truth.
“I’m guilty.”
Pansy was sobbing before the words had even escaped his throat.
“Then you are therefore to be held in Azkaban until the hearing on your punishment. Court is dismissed.”
The petrified look on Pansy’s face that day had killed a part of him inside. He now knew what it was like to be without someone you loved for a prolonged period of time, and he could tell someone without experience that it makes everything you do seem as if it’s the end of the world, no matter what it is. He had now gone a year without seeing her pretty face, that bushy hair, and that wonderful smile, and he had found himself clinging to that very picture in the far corner of his mind, wishing the entire three-hundred-odd days he was in that cell that she would at least come to visit him. But she never had. He had figured it because she wouldn’t have been able to bear the sight of the thin, emaciated boy inside. When he was trapped inside his cell, he was not a man by any means; he had cried many wretched tears inside that prison, yearning only for one thing: Pansy.
But that memory too slipped from his mind as he glimpsed the horrid creatures bellowing toward him.
The three were now only a foot away, and he could feel death beckoning to him . . . he could see the light and it was so beautiful . . . possibly even more beautiful than Pansy.
Pansy then entered his mind, willing him to fight.
”Pansy, I’ve . . .” he paused, fighting the sob emerging from this throat, panic washing over him as he stepped in the doorway, her ushering him in. “I’ve just killed people. Three. Muggles.”
Pansy gazed at him, grief-stricken, ashamed at what Draco had done, but her feelings did not falter. She grabbed him tenderly by the robes and led him over to the sofa in the next room, running into the kitchen to grab a thick blanket out of the closet and place a pot of tea on the stove.
“I think I need to run. The Ministry is already after me.” His words were becoming slurred with terror, and his eyes widened as he continued to think of the horrors he had just unleashed on the families of those lifeless Muggles. He was swaying back and forth. He realised that he was the one to make them lifeless.
Pansy came back into the room the next second, shushing his thoughts and wrapping the small blanket around him. “Shh . . .” she whispered soothingly, treating him as if he were a child. “Don’t speak. Think of nothing. Think of anything but what you’ve done.”
Draco laid his messy, blonde hair on her shoulder. He saw trickles of red in it but dismissed the droplets as nothing more than dirt. His grey eyes were mixed with that of horror and sacrifice, and Pansy could tell that he truly regretted what he had done. The question of why he had done what he had done remained a mystery. She would ask him why he had murdered, he knew, but all in due time. Right now, she just allowed his thick tears to fall onto her blouse, comforting him as if he were a baby.
~ * ~
“Because V---” he paused. He was too afraid to even speak his true name. He shook his head and closed his eyes shut tightly, then opened them with a newfound fearlessness. “Volde--- mort gave me a mission.”
Pansy kept her mouth closed, her lips itching to spread and ask questions; she wanted to know why he was associating with Voldemort in the first place but she kept her mouth shut to allow him time to tell his story.
“He told me that if I didn’t complete it truthfully, then he would murder . . .” he paused again, pushing away his hair and finally making eye contact with Pansy. “He told me he would murder you, Pansy.”
Pansy’s eyes widened and she wrapped Draco in a hug, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Draco . . . you could have run. We could have found you some protection---”
“But I loved you, Pansy.”
Pansy realised that it had been a rash decision and he truly did love her, and that’s why he had murdered. Pansy was well aware that the Dark Lord had already killed his family, and she, Pansy, was the only thing left. She thought of what she would have done, and she realised that she most likely would have done the same thing. Silence followed for the longest time before either one of them spoke.
“Thank you.”
He had released the embrace and slowly cupped his right hand around her cheek, lowering his face to hers and meeting her lips. They had kissed passionately, both enjoying that one intimate moment before they would be forced apart by a large group of Aurors .The door flew open only a second after the kiss was broken.
As he was pulled out of the door behind a rather burly Auror, a few others surrounding him with their wands, Pansy stood up from her seat and said ever so quietly amongst the clamour, “I love you, too.”
And Draco had heard her.
“EXPECTO PATRONUM!” he yelled as loud as his throat could muster, and he suddenly felt light and as free as a bird. He hunched over on the ground, tired from the energy he had just produced, and closed his eyes. The Dementors began to back up. He could feel it. They were pushed out of the cell. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel his bad memories being forced away from him, their icy take on the room now was beginning to return to its normal, dank temperature.
When he did look up, his Patronus, an eagle, came back to him with pure magnificence. Its wings spread out as it came flying over to him and landed on his shoulder spectacularly. He was russet and white and had a black bill. Its claws dug into Draco’s flesh, but he couldn’t feel anything. It was the most beautiful animal Draco had ever seen. It had just saved his life. After a few moments of dead silence, it disappeared without a sound, its woody scent now gone from the air.
But Draco’s job wasn’t done yet.
“Why are you fighting?” he asked rudely, his yellow teeth protruding from his mouth with that same grin. He stepped toward the cell, spitting on Draco with each word. The Dementors stopped at the entrance.
Draco looked up at him, his wand still rolling between two fingers if he needed another effort to fight. He was ready, he could do it; he had the courage.
“Because I don’t want to die this way.” Draco looked up at him with weary, half-closed eyes in an attempt for pity.
“Does anyone want to die this way?” When the man spoke those words, Draco felt that he had gained some compassion, but it was forced, truly, from the gentleman. He was only waiting for the Dementors to carry out their work. The Ministry official stared at Draco as if he was something he had never seen before. This was absurd, really! Even from the strict security set inside this prison, the prisoner had still gotten hold of a wand. The Dementors were going to go back. They were going to fulfil their duties. They were going to execute this man, wand or not. How he had even obtained the wand was beyond his knowledge, but he would order the Dementors back inside. He couldn’t risk the duel himself.
“I have someone that I love out there. I’m not just going to---“
The Dementors then, at an extremely rapid rate (though one could tell they were fearful), approached back inside the cell, sucking on his latest remembrance of his love. Draco gasped out a cry of pain. The horrid figures then stayed in place, though. They had to wait on their orders.
“Pansy Parkinson?” the man spat. His words had an almost comical air to them, but Draco just shook his head and continued. He looked at the woman next to him carelessly, and then turned back to the inmate.
“The one and only.”
“She’s dead.”
This didn’t come from the Ministry official, it came from the woman. She wiped her tears on a worn hanky silently, sniffing. Draco’s heart jolted and he felt as if he were going to be sick. He started breathing rapidly.
“Wh--- What? No. No, she can’t be,” Draco said pleadingly. “Please. Please tell me she’s not.”
The woman stared at him for a moment through tearful eyes, and then nodded.
Draco hung his head and took in a gulp of air. He couldn’t breathe. Tears started pouring from his cheeks.
“NO! No. No, she’s not. You’re lying. You’re only doing this because you---“
“I wouldn’t dare lie to you. She died the day you went to Azkaban.”
“You- You mean all this time that I’ve been here, she’s been dead?”
The woman nodded. The Ministry official next to her looked at her strangely then turned back to the crumpling man inside his cell.
Draco broke down and he fell to the floor. The wand rolled out of his grasp, this time out of the cell and his reach. The man picked it up and started to back away, eyeing the Dementors.
“She loved you, though. She always will.”
Draco looked up at her, disbelieving that this woman knew so much about Pansy, and he fell back to the ground, sobbing. The man directed the Dementors into the cell.
They glided towards him slowly at first, then quickly. There was no more happiness left inside Draco Malfoy, but they still had to carry out their task. There were no screams of terror as there usually was in an execution; there were only sobs of the woman outside the cell. It became louder than the sound of the sucking Dementors. They pulled back their hoods and moved in closer and closer to the wounded boy.
~ * ~
Only a minute later, the Dementors were gone, as was the man’s soul. The woman had stayed behind.
She stood in a tearful corner of the hallway, her cries coming more and more hastily as she stared at the lifeless body inside the cell. She sunk down to the floor, her knees sliding out from under her. She had no support to lean on for the wall, but she couldn’t get her hands to move either. She didn’t feel as if she would ever seek or feel solace again as the tears began to pour forth from her eyes, her sobs becoming more and more apparent with each passing second. His thin, blonde hair was now close to white, she noticed from afar, and the dust that the struggle had stirred up clung to his clothes. His cheeks were still tear-stained from his last moments of grief, and his mouth was open in agony.
The woman walked over to the cell, trying not to allow her legs to fall from under her as she made her way over to him. She stood over the body of Draco Malfoy, then went to her knees and swept the hair out of his face.
She had wanted to make sure that he was truly gone before she left him forever. She couldn’t have moved on if it weren’t for that; no peace would have come. She still felt utterly and absolutely morbid that she had chosen to watch his death, but she never would have been at concord if it weren’t for this. She had to.
She pulled her hair down from her bun, allowing blonde, stringy wisps to tangle in her face. She reached down, and with quivering lips, met his cheek and kissed him. She breathed in a sob as she finally took a step back.
The Dementors had sucked all of her happiness away as well.
She stood there for only a moment more, taking in what all had just happened.
“I’ll always love you,” she told him one last time, her eyes staring into his glassy ones for the last time before slowly picking herself off the stone ground and leaving the prison.