Saint Potter

Draco Malfoy, young and most bitter.

He rubbed at his eyes, and pulled at his hair. This was driving him nuts, locked away in a house that barely had anything left, not even skeletons in closets.

What he wouldn't do for a walk outside.

But, he smiled with chapped lips framing sharp teeth, he could never risk it. Walk outside? Outside the walls of this house? He would rather die then do such a thing.

Who would risk their magic, for a pathetic thing such as the sun? Or the grass? Or the peacocks that Draco hadn't feed since... since when?

Well, Draco sat down to think on this. Has he ever fed the peacocks that lived on the Malfoy Manor grounds?

No, that was his father's job.

As he sat their, slumped over the fire's hearth and drinking in the heat, Draco almost started to cry. He had to count back from a hundred, to stop the tears that would have caused him to pass out.

From disgust, or not having any sleep for four days straight?
One may never know.

But he could feel it now, along with the ringing in his ears. Before he tried to sleep, and after he had given up on it, too. He could feel the emptiness, the loneliness.

He could feel his magical core, fading away.

In all of his twenty five years of living, Draco had not once let himself go so far. Into the pit of pity, where disgusting things hide, and cruel things breed.

He was so old now. He missed being elevan.
If Draco didn't have so much self worth, he would have thrown himself into the fire.

He would, if he didn't have so much self worth, have killed himself a hundred times over by now. He would have slit his throat, or drowned himself in his oversized bathtub, or gauged his own eyes out.

'Or I would have-'

Sadly, Draco didn't get to finish that thought. Because now he was on his back, and there was an angel.

An angel from the place his mother used to take him to, an angel from the book his godfather used to read for him.

An angel from the hopes of his father's dreams, a man so far deep in death he cried out for, an angel that could heal wounds and fix lives. Miracles, that's what his father used to call for.

It took him half a second to realise that the face, disgust and helplessness weaving lines, was none other then Harry Potter.

Harry. Bleeding. Potter.

Draco really started to cry then, sobbing ugly sounds, spit and snot and tears mixing until Draco couldn't bare it any longer, rolling over to rub his face in the dusty carpet.

"Can't you bastards just leave me alone!" He was bawling now, headbutting the carpet until he swore his eyes were about to burst.

"Right. W-well I'm just going to go make myself a cup of tea, then." Draco crawled to the stairs, hiccupping and waiting for the rest of his eyeballs to drain out of his head.

They didn't.

When he found himself in bed, he was stretching out as much as one could in a closet. The sounds of a kettle whistling was too loud for that quiet house, Draco flinched and crawled deeper and deeper until he was at the very back.
It was nice in here, dust clogging up his senses, rats probably making nests in draws and clothes.

Draco feels like his later teenage years were slightly ruined.
Now, it depends on the readers opinion, but one could only disagree. Why only the later teenage years? Why not his whole life?

From sweet beginning, to bitter end.

Oh, why couldn't he just end it?

He must have fallen asleep, because when he woke up, he had a rat nibbling at his nose. It was most disgusting, and slightly annoying. What Draco wouldn't do for his wand, if only to just skin the feral little buggers.

He crawled out of his bed after half an hour, and listened at the top of the stairs for noise.

He would have thought it empty, thankfully so, if it hadn't been for the humming and clinking of utensils.

Potter, his archnemises, was possibly down stairs. Draco wished he knew the time, but every clock was broken, and every window covered.

He went to his mother and father's bedroom, sifting through the clothes he had stored in there before he had realised he was never going back out again. He had been hopeful, younger then he was now.

The dress robes he had pulled on after his shower had been crinkled, moth eaten, and many sizes too big.

Draco walked down the main stairs, long hair knotted and hidden under his top hat, an accessory he had grown attached to over the years.

By his side was his father's dreadful cane, chipped and old and missing a gem eye.

Potter had been listening to a strange, blinking and shining object when Draco had walked in. Draco barely got a glance at it before Potter was pulling the string things from his ears and shoving the whole alien thing into his pocket.

"Good afternoon, Mr Harry Potter. What brings you to Malfoy Manor?" Potter watched him with hooded eyes, fingers twitching to a wand Draco was sure wasn't there.

As if they would allow a wand to come within Malfoy Manor.
"Well, Mr Malfoy. We've been getting, ah, some concerning readings..." Draco leaned on the cane for a moment, thinking absentmindedly if he could get a parrot, or one of those talking ferrets.

"Hmm, talking rodents or tricky birds..." Draco almost fell asleep (oh, sweet baby Merlin... sleep...) but his grasp on the head of the cane slipped, his stained gloves seeming much bothersome.

"Oh, ah, yes. What readings, Mr Potter, are we talking about? Have you caught me reading my erotica again, have you?" Potter suddenly went red in the face, and Draco twitched, his lips pulling back in a ghastly sneer.

"N-no, your emotional reader... it was a new spell, that we had discussed last February?" Potter looked at him hopefully, fiddling with a fork and a spoon and-

Was that cereal? How long has Draco been asleep?
Is it still even Tuesday?

Draco stared at Potter, eyes glazing and hat slipping over his eyebrows. Potter stared at him as if he had grown two heads, it was then that Draco dabbed at the corner of his lips, finding drool and blood there.

"It... it transfers your feelings- not thoughts, if you've forgotten. We got a whole lot of... suicidal in that mix this past week." Potter leaned back into his chair, and Draco was picking at the thin layer of his lips.

"More so the past twenty four hours." Draco jumped, looking at the vine-covered skylight his mother had gotten installed in the dining room.

And to think, an angel.

How laughably pitiful. What would an angel be doing, saving him from a mess he had made himself?

"Malfoy?" Draco looked up at that, a toothy grin stretching his face strange.

"Ah, Potter, where's your little lion cubs? Running around stupid someplace else?" He breathlessly laughed at that, swaggering forward as he swung his cane around slightly.
"Or are they looking after other freaks, too?"

Potter rubbed his face, running fingers through hair.

"You know, Potter," Draco moved the cane to hang off his elbow, both hands now grasping the tall, wooden chairs his mother had always hated, "everyone thought you were going to be so handsome..." Potter looked up from his hands, glasses askew and hair no different.

"And you were, for the first few years. You have gotten quiet ugly, haven't you?" Draco watched with excitment leaving tracks down his brow, hands shaking and feet slipping.

Those shoes were too big, also. They were his fathers; Draco had burnt all of his years ago.

Potter sighed and rubbed his eyebrow, taking his glasses off. This allowed Draco to squint at Potter's auror uniform, and the wedding band on his finger.

He remembered Potter was a human, then.

"Look, I have to stay here for as long as it takes, until your mental health picks up." Draco was picking at an ingrown hair on his cheek then, picking until his skin bled.

"What happened to you, Malfoy? They've fucked you right up." Draco pulled the chair out and sat, holding the cane in his glove hands, tightly.

What does one do with canes at tables; what had father done?

Potter watched, flabbergasted as Draco pulled his feet to rest ontop of the table, wood bare of cloth or decoration.
Unless you considered Draco's shoes, and Potter's cereal as such.

Draco smiled kindly, sat awkwardly off to the side of his chair with his bum ready to slip. He swore he was loosing his sight, because Potter just blushed.

Or maybe he didn't have eyes. Maybe they had fallen out, and he was in the process of dying. Because typically, if you hit your head hard enough to make your eyes burst, death must be near.

He almost forgot his father's cane, flopping around in his seat, bending backwards under his chair to grab it.

It's strange, because he didn't remember putting it down. Perhaps he had dropped it when getting comfortable? He thought of this as he sneezed.

Draco placed it inbetween his legs, more accurately between his crossed knees.

Potter looked most frazzled, and Draco felt perfectly sane. As sane as Draco always thought his family were. Being incestuous, and all.

Potter bent down to pick up his fork, poking at a cereal Draco had been given three years ago.

Aurors dropped groceries off twice a month, though they now only gave him the bare minimum.

It could have something to do with the time he had shown in the foyer naked, covered in rotten food, with the leftovers as weapons for the two lady aurors.

Look, war does thing.

But this isn't one of them. After that day, he hadn't seen a lady since.

Watching Potter with fascination, he took of his hat. Maybe Potter had never been eating cereal, and had only used it as a flimsy shield.

A, 'look, this is normal, I am normal. People eat cereal, so do I,' type of thing.

Draco took off his hat and started to brush his hair back, a dirty blonde, strangely. Mother, what had you been up to?

But, he didn't miss Potter's grimace, or the way he touched his own hair. Was this considered strange?

"God, Malfoy... your hair looked better even in third year," Potter was looking anywhere else, but he was Draco's centre of attention. The Malfoy heir, it was funny to think about it sometimes, leant sideways on a lone back leg, smirking in a way he had perfected over the years.

"God? There are no gods, Harry." It tasted strange in his mouth, but he went along with it anyhow, tutting and rubbing at his nose.

He was cold.