The Sympathy of Scars

The forest pressed close, all branches and breath, a cage of wet bark and cold air. Harry lay awake in the tent and pretended he couldn’t hear Ron’s uneven snoring or Hermione’s quiet shifting on the other side of the thin canvas. He counted the beats of his heart and tried to line them up with the sound of rain starting, just beyond, little needles through leaves. His eyes burned. The inside of his skull felt bruised, as if thought itself was a physical strain. He didn’t move. If he kept still enough, it almost felt like rest.

It didn’t last. The jitter at the base of his neck came first, like static. Then the pressure behind his eyes. That awful, thin thread stretched tight and twanging—Voldemort’s presence just at the edge of his mind, a smear of intention and cold rage. He breathed shallowly and counted again. When it receded, leaving a faint headache and the taste of metal on his tongue, the relief was almost worse. It was never gone. It just waited.

Morning came with no real light, only the slow grey that made everything inside the tent look tired. Hermione coaxed their little blue flames into a cup to heat tea, her hands steady despite the chill. Ron stumbled out with his hair sticking up and complained about the damp, trying for a joke that fell flat in the heavy air. Harry wrapped his hands around the cup Hermione pressed into them and kept his gaze on the steam. It rose like a curtain and vanished before it reached his face.

“Nightmares?” Hermione asked softly, not quite looking at him. She knew the answer. He nodded anyway. It was easier than trying to explain the shapes that had followed him to the edge of sleep: green light bleeding into the corners of every thought, a snake’s whisper without words, faces. Dumbledore falling, Cedric on the ground, Sirius disappearing behind the veil. It wasn’t even the images that were the worst. It was the exhaustion of bracing for them and failing every time.

They took the tent down in silence. The routine had a rhythm that was almost comforting. Almost. Harry folded the flaps with numb fingers and ignored the ache between his shoulder blades. It had started the third night after they’d gone on the run and rarely left him now, a knot of pain that felt like a reminder. You can’t set this down. Not ever.

They moved deeper into the trees, following a path Hermione had traced on a cracked page in the tent. She believed in plans. Harry wanted to. It was just that plans felt flimsy standing next to the weight in his chest. The locket lay there like a living thing, chilled through with old malice. When he touched it, his fingers tingled unpleasantly, as if he had dipped them in something sour. When he wore it, the world dulled and sharpened at once, every sound too loud and too far away. He could feel Ron’s irritation more quickly, could catch the exact moment Hermione’s patience thinned. He hated what it did to him. He wore it anyway. He had to.

They ate by noon, if it could be called that. A crust shared three ways. Hermione rationed everything with careful kindness. Ron grumbled on principle a few times and then stopped when he caught Harry’s expression. There was a kind of pity in his friend’s glance that made Harry’s stomach twist. He didn’t want that. He wanted to be fine. He wanted to say he could handle it, all of it. He chewed and swallowed and said nothing.

By afternoon, they had found a new spot, a shallow rise where the trees thinned enough for a weak sun to touch the ground. They set the protective charms. Hermione tapped the tent ropes and muttered under her breath, checking, double-checking. Ron tossed a twig and watched it bounce at the edge of the wards. Harry stood with the locket heavy against his chest and felt like an old man inside a young body. When he closed his eyes he saw a corridor lit with torchlight, and a voice hissing orders. It wasn’t a vision, not a full one. It was the echo of one. Half in, half out, the way it had been since summer. The way it would probably always be until Voldemort was dead.

That night, he tried to sleep on his side to press the ache out of his shoulder and keep his wand hand free. He went under quickly, not because he was comfortable but because there was nowhere else to go. The dream started as it always did, with feet running and the ground falling away. He was back at the lake and then the Ministry and then a hallway he didn’t recognize. He heard Hermione call his name from very far away. A window shattered in slow motion and spilled glass like rain. He reached for the edges of the vision as he’d been taught, trying to pull back, to throw up a wall. For a second he thought it would work. Then the wall cracked and that cold, triumphant laugh came in like fog under a door.

He saw a flash of skull-white skin and red eyes that didn’t blink. He saw a hand lift a wand and point. He didn’t hear the word, but he felt the spell leave like a hook, someplace in Wiltshire, maybe, or somewhere with polished floors. It wasn’t precise enough to be useful, only vivid enough to make him jolt awake with his heart punching hard against his ribs.

He sat up too fast and the world tilted. The tent roof loomed and the lantern cast honey-coloured light that made everything gentle, and it still didn’t feel safe. Ron mumbled something and rolled over. Hermione shifted and murmured, “Harry?” Harry pressed his palms over his eyes until he saw sparks. “I’m fine,” he said, because it was easier. Because he didn’t want to say that every time he closed his eyes it felt like drowning, that when he was awake he could feel someone else breathing at the edges of his life.

When he finally lay back down, the locket moved against his throat. Its weight set his teeth on edge. He thought of taking it off, then didn’t. He hoped for a blank stretch of nothing and got fragments—half-memories, old pain re-coated, the soft sound of his mother’s voice obscured by the slither of something in the grass. He didn’t know how long it went on. He only knew that morning found him on his back, staring at the seam of the tent and trying to remember when sleep had last felt like relief.

They packed again, as if moving could shake this off. Hermione kept up a string of quiet encouragements. Ron tried to tease him into a smile. Harry answered when he needed to and drifted when he could. The forest shifted around them, trees turning to pines, ground softer. In a clearing, he paused and tilted his head, listening. There was nothing obvious, just the breath of the world, his friends, himself. And underneath all that—the thread. Thin, invisible, pulled tight. Somewhere out there, a mind like a blade. If he let himself, he could almost feel it smile. He kept walking. He didn’t have any other choice.

They waited until dusk before slipping out of the trees. The village was small and drab, a line of narrow houses and a single shop with a flickering sign. Hermione had chosen it because it was far from anywhere, the kind of place where people kept to themselves. Harry pulled his hood up and kept the locket tucked under his jumper, trying not to touch it. Snow flattened into grey slush on the road, the cold cutting through his boots. Ron muttered about socks under his breath until Hermione sent him a look that said, Please, not now.

They split without speaking. Hermione took the shop. Harry and Ron drifted toward the back lane where bins lined a low wall. The smell of stale beer and damp paper made Harry’s stomach twist with hunger. He checked the sky for owls and saw only the smudge of smoke from someone’s chimney. It should have been fine. He knew, even as he thought it, that it never was.

Hermione came back with a paper bag tucked under her coat. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, eyes bright with a brittle relief. “Bread. Tinned beans. Tea,” she said, voice low. “And I think I found aspirin.”

“Brilliant,” Ron said, already reaching. Harry lifted a hand. “Wait until we’re back in the—”

The pop wasn’t loud, but it was close. Apparition folded the air at the mouth of the lane, then again behind them. Three men, then five. Their clothes were mismatched, worn, their faces greedy and watchful. One had a scarf around the lower half of his face. Another had a half-healed burn down his neck. Wands were out before Harry had even finished swearing under his breath.

“Evening,” the one with the scarf said, cheerful in a way that made Harry’s skin go cold. His eyes slid over Hermione in a way that made Ron step forward without thinking. “Got your papers, then?”

Harry’s wand was in his hand. “We’re just passing through,” he said, even though the words were useless. He edged closer to Hermione, felt her shoulder press into his for a second, steadying. Ron set his jaw and moved to Harry’s left, the way he always did in a fight.

The man with the burn tilted his head, curious. “Let’s see your faces. And any unusual jewelry.” His gaze snagged on the line of the locket’s chain at Harry’s throat. Harry tucked it deeper without meaning to. The movement acted like a spark.

“Stupefy!” The shout came from the right. Harry threw up a Shield without thinking, the red light splashing and splitting across it. Ron fired back, a hex that caught one of them in the shoulder and spun him to the ground. The lane exploded into motion. Spells hit bins and sent them flying. Hermione’s Disarming charm snapped a wand out of the scarfed man’s hand, but another Snatcher caught it midair and leered.

They pressed Harry back toward the wall, trying to corner. He ducked a hex that hissed like oil and threw a Stunning spell that took the burn-scarred man full in the chest. The man pitched backward and lay still, a dark smear against the snow. Harry couldn’t think beyond the next block, the next deflection. He watched for the flare of purple light that meant something unpleasant and hooked Hermione’s coat with his free hand, pulling her out of the path of a curse that sliced the air where her head had been. His heart thudded hard and then harder, a drum in his ears.

“Protego!” Hermione’s voice was close. Ron swore and sent a jet of blue that made one of the Snatchers seize and sag. The scarfed man bared his teeth and pointed straight at Harry. “Av—”

Harry didn’t let him finish. “Expelliarmus!” The wand tore out of his grip and skittered under a bin. The man lunged after it and got a faceful of snow instead when Harry blasted the ground. Someone grabbed Harry’s sleeve; he twisted and jammed his elbow into a ribcage, heard a grunt. He didn’t look at faces. He looked at wrists, the angles of shoulders, where the next spell was aiming.

“Run,” he snapped, and they moved, not away but through. Ron slammed his shoulder into a Snatcher and knocked him into a wall. Hermione sent a silent hex that stuck another to the ground as if his boots had melted. A curse crackled past Harry’s ear, hot, and he smelled singed hair. The locket pulsed against his sternum, a small vicious throb that made his stomach turn. He thought distantly, Not now, and shoved the feeling down.

A Snatcher grabbed at Hermione’s bag and ripped it. Bread tumbled out, rolling through slush, the paper soaking dark. Hermione made a strangled sound and flicked her wand with sharp precision. “Petrificus Totalus!” The man went stiff as a board and fell backward into the mess with a splash.

There were more of them than Harry had counted at first. An extra pair had Apparated in behind the bins, trying to cut off their retreat. Harry shifted, keeping himself between Hermione and the new threat without thinking. The first curse from the newcomers went high and shattered a window behind them; glass rained down in bright slices. He lifted a Shield again and felt it sing under the impact.

“Stunners!” Ron shouted, and they answered in sync, three red beams lancing out together and dropping two more. The scarfed man, still snarling, dove for his lost wand, found it, and came up casting. Harry met him spell for spell, his muscles moving in a rhythm that had nothing to do with grace and everything to do with survival. He could feel the shape of Hermione at his right, the way she shifted her weight to cast; he could feel where Ron was going to be without looking. It wasn’t elegant. It worked.

A shout from the street. Someone had seen, or would. The world narrowed down to a frost-bitten mouth of alley and breath clouding in the air. One of the Snatchers, breathless, eyes too wide, looked at Harry’s face as if trying to see through the distortions of the wind and the hood. “That’s—”

Harry hit him with a jinx that glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “Go,” he said again, and this time they obeyed. Hermione flicked her wand and sent a spray of ice skittering under the feet of the two still standing. They fell, cursing, arms pinwheeling. Ron grabbed Harry’s sleeve and jerked him left.

They ran. Snow spit sideways, stinging their cheeks. The lane opened onto the main road and then into a field edged with black hedges. Spells followed like angry bees, striking the ground near their heels. Harry risked a glance back and saw figures skidding and stumbling, more appearing at the end of the lane as the noise drew them. Not many, but enough.

He slowed only enough to turn and fire a Bludgeoning hex that slammed into the lead Snatcher and bent him over with a wheeze. Hermione threw up a wide Shield behind them that flashed as a curse hit and broke apart. Ron’s hand hit Harry’s back, urging him on. The wards of the forest were close. He could feel them the way he felt the pull on his mind sometimes, like a pressure shift.

They hit the trees at a sprint. Branches whipped their faces and snagged at their clothes. Hermione’s breath came in sharp little bursts; Ron’s was rough and loud. Harry tasted iron. He risked one more look and saw that only two had followed into the woods. He slashed his wand sideways. “Deprimo!” The earth dipped and rolled under the Snatchers’ feet, and they went down hard.

“Here!” Hermione veered, hand out, fingers splayed, and the air shimmered as they crossed into their warded space. The sounds from the lane dulled at once, as if someone had shut a door. Harry didn’t stop moving until they were under the charmwork, and then he turned and stood with his back to the tent poles, wand still up, waiting for something to crash through.

Nothing did. The two shapes at the edge of the trees hesitated, like dogs at an invisible fence. One swore, furious and frustrated, and pointed a wand. The spell fizzled against Hermione’s protection. The men glared, spat, and vanished with two sharp cracks, leaving only the cold and the sound of their own breathing.

Hermione sat down abruptly on the wet ground and pressed both hands over her mouth, eyes bright with unshed tears. Ron bent double, hands on his knees, laughing once in a breathless, disbelieving way that wasn’t joy. Harry kept his wand up for another thirty seconds, chest heaving, and then lowered it slowly, fingers shaking.

“We need to move,” he said, because it was the only thought he could hold. “Soon as we can. They’ll bring more.” He swallowed, tasted ash. He looked at Hermione’s torn bag and the scattered bread she’d managed to scoop back up. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, then nodded, then shook it again, a tiny, jerky motion. “I’m fine,” she said, voice thin. “I’m fine.”

Ron straightened and glanced toward the trees with a hard set to his mouth. “They were waiting,” he said. “They knew.”

Harry didn’t answer. The locket pulsed once under his jumper, cold and satisfied. He pressed his palm against it through the fabric until it hurt. He couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on them even with the wards humming. He pictured the scarfed man’s look, the way he’d drawn breath to speak a name. He closed his eyes and saw green. When he opened them, the world was still grey and cold and immediate. He moved to Hermione and took the ruined bag from her, fingers brushing hers. “We’ll go in ten,” he said, quiet and certain. “We’ll be gone before they have a chance.” He didn’t say from whom. He didn’t need to.

Ron and Hermione moved inside, the tent flaps whispering shut behind them. Harry stayed in the cold, his breath soft and white in the dark. The wards hummed faintly, a low pressure in his ears. He thought if he stood there long enough, if he fixed his eyes on the thinning line of trees, he would see nothing but black bark and snow.

He did see it. A pale oval, half-hidden by a trunk, too still to be a trick of light. A face. Familiar.

His lungs forgot how to work for a second. The angles were the same as they had always been: high cheekbones, defined jaw, a mouth held like he was refusing something. The hair was lighter than the snow, rain-damp and flattened. Draco Malfoy leaned in the lee of a birch tree as though he might be sick, hands out of sight, shoulders stiff. He wasn’t alone. A taller figure stood just behind him, a heavy cloak and a hood that shadowed everything but a thin, sallow chin and the glint of a ring when a gloved hand gestured lazily. The ring caught the starlight with a hard, cold blink.

Harry felt the sick recognition slide through him. Not just Malfoy. A Death Eater. Someone senior. The way the man’s presence carved the air felt the way a curse sounded before it left a wand—controlled, cruel, bored.

They were far enough away that Harry had to squint to be sure. He didn’t move. If he stepped forward, if he made a sound, if the wards trembled—he didn’t know what. He tightened his grip on his wand until his knuckles ached and held very still.

Malfoy didn’t look at him. His gaze fixed somewhere on the ground between the trees, lashes lowered, as if counting his breaths. He was thinner. Even from the distance, Harry could make out the sharpness at his throat, the hollows under his eyes. He looked as though the cold had gotten under his skin and stuck there. The greenish tint of the skin around his mouth made something in Harry go quiet and tight.

The hooded man leaned forward, spoke low, and Harry couldn’t hear the words through the wards, but he recognized the sound of a command. Malfoy’s mouth moved. A nod. He turned his head toward the lane they had just left, toward the bodies and the mess, but he didn’t step out. His hand lifted once, as if to ward off a smell, and then fell again to his side.

Harry tried to make himself angry. It was easier to be angry at Malfoy than to be anything else. Easier to recall the sneer on his face in first year, the way he had laughed by the lake, the way he had stood on a staircase and watched Dumbledore’s body fall. But the picture in front of him didn’t fit those memories neatly. This boy was not sneering. He was braced. If the Death Eater had a hand on the back of his neck, guiding him, it would not have surprised Harry.

The hooded figure turned his head, eyes scanning the trees with a bored kind of interest, the way a cat might watch a hole. Malfoy’s shoulders tightened but he did not follow the gaze. He stayed pointed at the lane. His hands were fists in his pockets.

A burst of color lit the far end of the field—someone repairing the broken window, maybe, or a Reparo on a fallen bin. The light slid across Malfoy’s face for a heartbeat and showed everything too clearly. The cut at his hairline, new and raw. The small tremble at the corner of his mouth that he tried to press flat. The eyes, damp at the edges, a stormy grey gone dull. Harry’s throat closed.

Without meaning to, his weight shifted forward, a half-step that brought him closer to the edge of the wards. The invisible line shivered against his chest like a warning. He stopped. He knew how this worked. A flicker, a ripple, and that hood would turn. He would be seen. He would be heard.

The Death Eater spoke again, sharper this time. Malfoy flinched like a scolded dog and took one pale step into the open. His head turned toward the lane. He stood there and looked. Harry couldn’t tell if his gaze caught on the stunned men, the spilled bread, the mess Hermione’s hex had made of the snow. He never once looked toward the warded space, not even when the hooded man made a small sound and moved his hand in a direction that was unmistakable. Not even then.

For one suspended second, Harry imagined their eyes meeting through the trees. He imagined Malfoy’s face changing—anger, triumph, anything familiar. He let himself think it would be clean if Malfoy lifted his chin and called others out of the dark. He could hate him for it. He could understand the lines again.

Malfoy did nothing. He stood and he watched and he looked like he was going to be sick. The Death Eater’s gloved hand landed on his shoulder, heavy and possessive, and squeezed. Malfoy swayed and pulled in a breath through his nose. Then both of them disappeared with a soft crack that barely disturbed the air.

The trees were trees again. The snow was only snow.

Harry realized his fingers were numb around his wand. He let his arm drop and swallowed. The taste of metal stayed in his mouth. The place where the hand had rested on Malfoy’s shoulder burned in his mind with a clarity that made him feel unsteady. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Draco Malfoy with Death Eaters. It fit in the list of things he knew: the Mark burned into his arm; the way he had opened the castle to danger; the way he had stood, white and silent, while others did worse things than he could make himself do.

But that wasn’t the picture he had seen here, in the edges of a small Muggle village, with the cold snapping at their ankles. He had seen someone pressed in, cornered, held like a piece of property. He had seen a boy who refused to look at him.

Harry backed up a step and then another, pulled inside by the smell of damp canvas and smoke. Ron was rummaging for the kettle, muttering. Hermione had her hands around a chipped mug, staring at the steam like it had answers in it. She glanced up when the flap closed and searched his face for new damage.

“What?” she asked quietly.

“Nothing,” Harry lied. His voice came out thin. He set his wand on the crate they used as a table and tugged at the locket as if it had shifted and dug in. It throbbed once under his palm, greedy, as if it knew. He thought of the pale face in the trees and the way the shoulders had gone rigid under someone else’s hand. He thought of eyes that had not met his when every instinct in him had braced for them to.

He sank onto a stool and rubbed at his knuckles because they hurt. He knew he should tell them. He should say: Malfoy is out there. He should say: He’s with them. He should say: We were watched. The words got stuck behind the memory of the ring glinting and the way Draco’s mouth had flattened, stubborn against everything. He thought of the way the wards had hummed like a warning when he had stepped forward, and the way his bones had reacted like they knew the shape of danger.

Ron poured water and swore at the flame for not catching. Hermione reached without looking and coaxed it with a flick of her fingers. The warmth crept up like a reluctant animal.

“We should sleep,” she said eventually, exhaustion dragging at the edges of her voice. “We’ll leave before dawn.”

Harry nodded. He reached for the mug and held it between both hands. As the heat sank into his palms, the cold sunk deeper somewhere else. When he closed his eyes, the image of Draco in the trees stayed. He tried to push it aside and found, irritatingly, that it resisted, stubborn and present. It lodged in the same place the sound of the hooded man’s hand had landed, the same place where guilt sometimes sat and refused to move.

He took a sip and didn’t taste it. Outside, the snow shifted off a branch and fell in a soft sweep. The night settled around their little circle of safety. Harry kept seeing Malfoy not looking at him, ignoring the pull of it with a steadiness that didn’t feel like contempt. It felt like refusal. It felt like someone refusing to let themselves recognize something they wouldn’t know what to do with if they did.

He stared into his tea until it went lukewarm and then cold, and at last, because there was nothing else to do, he stood and crawled into his bunk. He shut his eyes and expected green light and snakes. Instead, he found a blankness as wide and empty as the field, a silence so complete that it made him hold his breath and listen harder. He turned onto his side and saw the birch tree again, and the pale oval that had been a face, and the way it had vanishingly avoided him. He fell into that quiet without rest, his last thought a stubborn, unwanted echo: why didn’t he look?

The quiet should have soothed him. It should have been a blessing—no whispers in his scar, no sharp-edged dreams, no bursts of grief that woke him with his throat raw. For the first time in weeks, sleep didn’t take him anywhere. It left him in a still, cold lake of nothing, and he floated, and it felt wrong.

He tossed once, then again, and gave up. The canvas above him shifted with the wind. Every creak sounded like footsteps that never arrived. He pushed back the blanket and sat up, his shirt clinging to the back of his neck. The locket lay heavy and cold where it had slipped against his chest. He pulled it off with an impatient tug and set it down, and even that small distance made the air feel easier to draw into his lungs.

Ron snored softly across from him. Hermione’s breathing was steady—too even to be real sleep, but she didn’t move. Harry stared at the blurred outline of the tent pole until his eyes burned. He let them fall closed again, and there he was, uninvited: a grey-eyed face cut thin by winter, expression fixed because moving would mean breaking.

It was ridiculous. It was Malfoy. There were a hundred more important things to think about. Horcruxes. Hiding places for tomorrow. The way Hermione’s hands shook when she thought he wasn’t looking. He tightened his jaw and forced the image back into the trees, back under that gloved hand, out of his head.

It came back anyway, softer, the way memories did when you tried to shove them hard and they slid around your grip. The ring’s shine. The tired line of a mouth pressed flat. The smallest flinch at a voice Harry hadn’t even heard through the wards.

He swallowed and felt the ghost of that same flinch in his own throat.

There had been a hundred versions of Draco Malfoy since first year. Smirking on a broom. Pointing and laughing in a corridor. Pale-faced on a tower, fingers shaking. The one in the snow did not slot beside any of them neatly. It didn’t demand anger the way it should have. It didn’t ask to be dismissed. It just lingered with the stubbornness of something true.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until stars sparked there. He told himself it didn’t matter if Malfoy looked ill. He told himself it didn’t matter if he had hesitated. It didn’t matter because he had chosen a side, and that side was the one with rings that glinted coldly in the dark. It didn’t matter because whatever Malfoy had done or not done in that lane would be overwritten by the next order snapped at him, the next thing he didn’t say no to. Deserving pity didn’t mean excusing what had happened. It didn’t change anything that needed changing.

But it had happened. Harry had seen it, and his mind, traitorous, wouldn’t let it go.

He lay back down. Sleep stayed out of reach. He could feel the night pressing in on the tent, the stillness of the woods, the exhaustion in his bones. Under it, something kept moving—irritation, grief, a pulse of anger that wasn’t as straightforward as he wanted it to be. He didn’t want to imagine what it was like to stand one step in front of a man whose touch made your shoulders go rigid. He didn’t want to imagine choosing not to look, because looking would make everything worse. He had lived that kind of choice for years—where to look, what not to see because it would pull you under.

He turned on his side. The canvas whispered as the wind found a seam. He thought of Malfoy’s eyes fixed on the ruined lane. He thought of the way Draco had kept himself still, like moving might break something. He tried out different labels—coward, liar, snake—and none of them stuck to the image in a way that made his chest unclench.

In the morning, when pale light seeped in and the cold bit his nose, he was ready with the practical things. He brewed tea that tasted of boiled grass. He rolled the tent flap up and let the air in. He shook Ron awake with his foot and pretended he hadn’t spent the night counting the spaces between breaths. When Hermione looked at him and asked, “Bad?” he said, “Empty,” and that was somehow worse.

“Any sign of them?” Ron said, squinting at the tree line.

“No,” Harry said. He let his gaze slide past the birch without pausing. He said it as if the word meant more than it did. No. No men with wands. No footsteps. No pale boy with a line at his mouth. No hand on anyone’s shoulder. No.

They ate quickly and broke camp in practiced silence. Harry wrapped the locket back around his neck. It settled where it always did, heavy as a reminder. He should have told them about Malfoy and the man with the ring. He didn’t. He told himself it was pointless information—they were already careful; they were already not going back that way; Death Eaters were everywhere. He kept his mouth closed because once he opened it, something hard and dry might come out, and he didn’t want to look at it.

By the time they were walking again, through thinning trees and onto a narrow, rutted path, the snow had crusted to ice. Their boots cracked through it with small, sharp sounds. Harry kept his eyes on the ground, on the rhythm of one step and then another. When Ron grumbled about the cold and Hermione answered absently, Harry let their voices roll over him without catching.

The field appeared again in his head when the sky was the colour of unlit pewter, when his fingers were too stiff to feel the strap of his bag. It came in like a breath he hadn’t meant to take. He saw the gloved hand. He saw Draco swaying but not stepping away. He saw his own body lean, just a fraction, toward the edge of their safety. He tightened the strap until it bit. He was tired of this. He was tired of his mind being tugged by things he couldn’t fix.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told himself, a whisper that didn’t even frost in the air. He said it again, harder in his head. It doesn’t change where we’re going. It doesn’t change what he’s done. It doesn’t change what I have to do.

It didn’t, and still, the picture didn’t dissolve like it should have. It hung just to the side, like something seen out of the corner of your eye. Not a threat. Not a solution. Just a boy in a wood, looking at the wreckage and refusing, with everything in him, to look at the one person who might have been looking back. Harry hated that he understood why. He hated that he couldn’t hate it cleanly.

He kept walking. The path cut through a gate and into a copse of holly, and the world narrowed to branches and breath. Behind his sternum, that image lodged and did not shift. He told himself again that it was irrelevant. The word felt thin. He tucked his chin into his scarf and let the day pull him forward, the unanswered question falling in step beside him like an unwelcome shadow.

Night came down early, and with it the kind of cold that got inside joints and stayed there. They set the tent with hands that knew the motions by now, silent and sure. Hermione warded the perimeter twice, then a third time for good measure. Ron coaxed a small fire from damp wood and stubbornness. Harry watched the flames until they were steady and then couldn’t bear them anymore. They made the tent feel smaller.

They ate tinned soup without comment. It tasted like tin. Hermione asked once if his scar hurt; he shook his head and said, “No,” and it was the truth. There was nothing moving there—no flicker, no edge catching. The absence pressed as much as any presence had.

When he ducked into his bunk, the canvas rustled around him with the rush of his breath. He pulled the blanket up to his chin, then shoved it down again, then pulled it up. The locket lay against his chest, an anchor that he’d grown used to. He stared at the seam where the ceiling met the wall and waited for the usual slide—the way sleep took him, rough and unwilling, dragging him through scenes he didn’t choose.

It didn’t come. Or rather, it came without shape. He slipped under and there was nothing. Not the forest, not laughter that wasn’t laughter, not a pale face by a birch. Just a flattening. It was like being lowered into deep water where sound stopped. It was like lying very still under a heavy blanket and realizing you couldn’t feel the weight.

He held his breath instinctively and then let it out. The quiet didn’t change. It didn’t have edges to find or avoid. He waited for the trick—how the dream would switch, how some corner would lift and let through something sharp and green. It stayed level. He turned his head and it felt like turning underwater. The thought came, small and uneasy: this wasn’t rest. This was a pause. He couldn’t see the thing he was paused from, and that made his stomach pull tight.

He tried to think of anything to anchor to. Counting works sometimes, when he’s trying to steady himself. He counted the number of steps from the tent flap to the nearest tree. He counted the breaths between Hermione’s midnight stirring and Ron’s habitual snore. The numbers sat in the nowhere of his head and didn’t add up to anything. They were just numbers, floating, not attached to a floor.

He turned again. The canvas whispered. He reached up and touched the locket, more habit than decision, and then, irritated with himself, he pulled it off. The chain slipped over his hair and the metal left a cold drag along his throat. He set it on the little makeshift table by his bed, exactly where he could grab it without looking. The lack of its weight didn’t change anything, not really. The air was no easier. He could hear nothing, which was the wrong kind of comfort.

He closed his eyes and let that blankness widen. He tried to give into it, like you’d let yourself float on your back and trust the water to hold you. It did hold him—too well. There was no give. There was nothing below and nothing above. No pull to the left, no current to fight. He had made peace with nightmares because he knew what they were, because waking up from them meant the world was still there and he was still in it. This felt like stepping out and not finding anything to step onto.

He thought of the field again, because his mind was small and traitorous. He didn’t see it, though; he felt where it would go if it appeared. A shape not present, like the ghost of a missing tooth your tongue always finds. He would have preferred Bellatrix’s laugh. He would have preferred the rush that accompanied pain, the prickling warming of fear. Those were real. They reminded him that he was a person inside a body. This nothingness made him feel like a thought someone had put down and forgotten to pick up.

He turned onto his stomach. The blanket dragged. He pressed his cheek into the pillow and waited for something to rise. It didn’t. The clock they didn’t wind ticked in his head anyway. He couldn’t tell if he had been lying there for ten minutes or three hours. The silence was a kind of noise, the way absence was a kind of weight. He thought, nonsensically, of the lake at Hogwarts in winter—of standing on ice and not knowing its thickness.

He considered waking Hermione. He didn’t. There was nothing to say. I can’t sleep, but I am sleeping. I can’t dream, but I am somewhere. She would frown and press his hand and give him a charm or a page of reasoning. He would be grateful and it wouldn’t change the empty room he was in.

He pushed a hand under his pillow and left it there, palm open against the cool sheet. He tried to imagine warmth sliding into it, the way it had when he’d held onto Ron in the Ministry, when he’d grabbed Hermione after the Locket had hissed. He could conjure the memory of weight and heat, but even that seemed far off, as if it belonged to someone else’s life.

Time moved, and he couldn’t tell how. At some point, Ron snored and then stopped and turned over; Hermione murmured without waking. At some point, the canvas above him lightened by a shade no one would have noticed if they weren’t watching for it. His neck ached, which was proof of a body. He squinted into the same quiet he had been drowning in and realized morning was creeping up in it.

He must have slept, because the hours went. But waking felt like surfacing into a room without windows. He opened his eyes and took in the exactly familiar tent, the exactly placed locket on the table, the exactly ordinary breathing around him. His mouth tasted stale. He rolled onto his back and let a breath out. It fogged in the cold and vanished.

It would have been a relief to say, bad dreams. It would have been a relief to have something to put words around. He reached for the locket and slid it back over his head. Its weight settled where it always did. He waited for the usual press against his sternum. It was there. It didn’t matter. The emptiness had left him with nothing to report and a heaviness that sat like a question.

He sat up, careful not to jar the table. The tent held its breath with him. For a second, he wished for the hiss under his scar, for the crackle that meant someone else’s thoughts might burst in and take this feeling away by force. The wish was gone as soon as he recognized it. He scrubbed a hand over his face and closed his eyes and saw nothing. It was worse than seeing what he hated.

He swung his legs over the side and set his feet on the cold ground. The day would start whether he was ready or not. He could do the movements—kettle, fire, pack—without thinking. That felt almost like mercy. He stood, joints complaining, and ducked out into the thin light, carrying the silence with him like a second skin.

The roses were the worst. They had been his mother’s pride, a labyrinth of white blossoms that scented the summer air with a fragrance so sweet it was almost sharp. Now they were dead. Skeletal, blackened canes clawed at the damp air, their thorns catching on his robes as he worked. The few petals that clung to the dead heads were the colour of old bruises. The whole garden was dying, a slow, creeping rot that had started the day the Dark Lord had made their home his own.

Draco knelt in the mud, a small, rusted trowel in his hand. The damp seeped through the knees of his trousers, a cold that felt permanent. His task for the morning, delivered by Amycus Carrow with a sneer that showed his yellowed teeth, was to clear the overgrown ivy from the base of the cherub fountain. It was house-elf work. It was humiliating. That was the point.

He yanked at a thick vine, the rough bark scraping his bare fingers. He refused to wear gloves. It was a small, stupid rebellion, a way of feeling the sting of it directly instead of the muffled discomfort of compliance. The vine tore free with a wet, ripping sound, taking a chunk of moss-eaten marble with it. He tossed it onto the growing pile beside him, his breath pluming in the chill. Above him, the stone cherub’s face was green with algae, its once-playful expression now a grotesque leer. The fountain hadn’t run in months. The basin held only a shallow pool of black, stagnant water that smelled of decay.

Everything smelled of decay. The house, the grounds, his own life.

He pushed a stray strand of pale hair from his eyes with the back of a dirty hand, leaving a smear of mud on his forehead. He didn’t care. There was no one to see him here but the ragged albino peacocks that still stalked the grounds, their once-immaculate tail feathers now limp and soiled. They were like his family: ornamental, useless, and trapped.

A familiar cold ache pulsed in his left forearm. He didn’t need to look at it. He could feel the Dark Mark through the layers of his shirt and robes, a permanent stain on his skin, on his soul. It was a brand, a shackle. The price of his father’s failure, a debt he was now paying daily. The Death Eaters who stomped through the halls of his home, who drank his father’s finest elf-made wine and stubbed out their cigarettes on the Aubusson rugs, never let him forget it. They delighted in his degradation. Look at the little prince, digging in the dirt. Not so high and mighty now, are you?

He could hear their voices in his head, a constant chorus of contempt. Yaxley, the Carrows, even Greyback, who sometimes watched him with an unnerving hunger in his eyes. They saw him as weak, a failure who couldn’t kill an old man. They were right. But they didn’t see the terror that had frozen the curse on his tongue. They only saw the result: a boy who had failed his one, critical test. And so he was given new ones. Polish my boots, Malfoy. Clear the west path, Malfoy. Stand guard in the rain and tell me if you see anything, Malfoy.

He hated them. He hated them with a pure, quiet intensity that burned in his stomach like acid. But he hated his own cowardice more. He had been given a choice, of a sort, on that tower. He had chosen this. This slow rot. This gilded cage where the bars were his own fear and the gilt was flaking away to reveal the cheap iron beneath.

He dug the trowel into the earth again, hitting a stone with a grating scrape that set his teeth on edge. He paused, his shoulders slumping. His back ached. His hands were raw. He looked at them, at the pale skin chapped and red from the cold, the dirt ground deep into his nailbeds. These were not the hands of a Malfoy. They were the hands of a servant.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the bare branches of the skeletal roses and carried with it the distant cry of one of the peacocks. It was a lonely, desolate sound. Draco lifted his head, his eyes drawn past the crumbling garden walls, towards the dark line of the woods that bordered the estate. The trees stood like silent, grim sentinels against a bruised-grey sky. And as he stared, the memory of the day before rose up, unbidden and sharp.

He had been standing just inside the tree line with Travers, the damp chill of the woods a poor substitute for an Invisibility Charm. The order had been simple: observe. The Snatchers, a mangy pack led by Scabior, were considered unreliable, prone to incompetence. The Dark Lord wanted a report on their methods. Draco was there to be Travers’s witness, his second set of eyes, his silent, breathing notepad.

The clearing had erupted in flashes of light before he’d even fully registered who they had cornered. Then he saw them. Potter, Weasley, and Granger. It was always them. A jolt, ugly and familiar, had shot through him. The Golden Trio, cornered like rats. For a moment, a vicious satisfaction had curled in his gut.

But the feeling had curdled almost immediately. They weren’t panicked. They were fighting.

He watched, his hands clenched into fists inside his robes, as Potter moved. There was none of the swaggering arrogance Draco remembered from the school corridors. This was something else entirely. Every spell, every duck and weave, was economical, desperate. He wasn’t trying to win; he was trying to keep the other two from being hit. He threw up a shield charm that absorbed a Stunning Spell meant for Granger, the impact making him stagger back a step. His face was thin, all sharp angles and dirt, his eyes burning with a furious exhaustion.

And Granger. She was terrifying. Her hair was a wild mess, and there was a long scratch down her cheek, but she fought with a cold, precise rage. Spells flew from her wand in a steady, vicious stream. She and Weasley moved back-to-back, a seamless unit of defense. Weasley, gangly and red-faced, was clumsy but fiercely protective, bellowing curses and physically shoving Granger out of the way of a jet of red light.

They were a unit. A single entity driven by the frantic, powerful will to protect each other.

Draco stood in the shadows, silent and cold, and a feeling he couldn’t name clawed at his throat. It was a bitter, hollow ache. He watched them fight for each other, for their lives, for a cause they so clearly believed in, and he was consumed by a sudden, venomous envy. What did he have? A crumbling manor filled with monsters. Parents who walked like ghosts, their love a suffocating cage of fear. A master who demanded everything and gave nothing but pain.

The Snatchers were brutish and undisciplined. They were being driven back. Scabior snarled an order, and for a second, the chaos cleared. Potter was momentarily exposed, his head turned towards Weasley. His eyes, impossibly green even from a distance, swept the tree line.

For a fraction of a second, they were about to lock onto Draco’s.

Panic, cold and absolute, seized him. He jerked his head away, staring hard at the bark of an ancient oak, his heart hammering against his ribs. He felt a wave of nausea so intense he thought he might be sick right there in the mulch at Travers’s feet. He could not let Potter see him. Not like this. Not as a silent observer to a failed ambush. Not as a glorified errand boy. He was Draco Malfoy. He was not… this. This spectator. This coward.

"They're getting away," Travers noted, his voice laced with bored contempt. "Useless curs."

Draco risked a glance back. The trio was already gone, vanished into the woods on the other side of the clearing, leaving behind a few groaning Snatchers and the lingering scent of ozone. He hadn’t even seen them Disapparate. They were just gone.

The bitter feeling hadn’t left. It had settled deep in his bones, a poison he couldn’t sweat out. Seeing Potter fighting with such raw desperation hadn’t been satisfying. It had been a mirror, showing him everything he wasn’t. Potter had friends who would die for him. He had a purpose that drove him through the dirt and the fear.

Draco had nothing but a dying garden and the cold weight of a brand on his arm.

"Draco."

The voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper on the wind, but it cut through his thoughts with the precision of a shard of glass. He didn't startle. He had learned long ago to be aware of every sound, every footstep in this house. He looked up from the muddy ground.

His mother stood at the edge of the blighted rose garden, her silver-grey robes doing little to ward off the damp chill. Her face, once so perfectly composed it seemed carved from alabaster, was now a masterpiece of strain. Fine lines bracketed her mouth, and there was a permanent tension in her brow that even her practiced aristocratic calm could not entirely smooth away. Her eyes, pale blue and sharp, darted from the pile of ripped ivy to the dirt on his face, and a flicker of something—pain, distaste, he couldn't tell—passed through them before being suppressed.

"You should come inside," she said, her voice low and even. "You'll catch a chill."

"Carrow's orders," Draco replied, his own voice flat. He pushed himself to his feet, his knees protesting. He felt the smear of mud on his forehead, a mark of his humiliation, and made no move to wipe it away. Let her see it. Let her see what they were reduced to.

Narcissa’s gaze swept the dead garden, the skeletal trees, the foul water in the fountain. She did not comment on the state of it, or on the nature of his task. To acknowledge it would be to give it power. Instead, she took a few steps closer, her silk slippers sinking slightly into the soft earth. She stopped just out of arm's reach.

"Your father and I were speaking," she began, her eyes fixed on a point just over his shoulder. She rarely made direct eye contact anymore when speaking of difficult things. "The Dark Lord is… displeased."

Draco felt a familiar cold dread coil in his stomach. It was a constant state of being now, but his mother's words gave it a fresh, sharp edge. "With what?"

"With everything," she said, a hint of steel entering her tone. "With the progress of the war. With the Ministry's failures. With the information he is given." Her eyes finally met his, and they were dark with warning. "Our position is not what it once was, Draco. Our loyalty has been questioned. Your father's... missteps at the Ministry have not been forgotten. They have not been forgiven."

She was talking about the prophecy, about Lucius's failure and his subsequent stay in Azkaban. It was the original sin that had led them here, to this garden, to this ruin.

"I am doing what I am told," Draco said, the words tasting like ash. He gestured vaguely with the rusted trowel, a bitter sweep that took in the fountain and the dead flowers. "I am a gardener now. A boot-black. What more can I do?"

"You can be careful," she hissed, her composure cracking for just a second. She took another step, and her hand came up, hovering as if she meant to touch his face, to wipe the mud away, but she stopped herself. Her fingers curled into a fist before she let her hand drop back to her side. "Do not give them any reason to look at you, to think of you. Do what they say, without complaint. Do not draw his attention. Every day we survive in this house is a victory, do you understand me? A quiet victory."

He understood. He understood that his life was now defined by not being noticed. By being so pliant and so broken that the monsters who lived in his home would grow bored of him. He was to be a ghost in his own life.

"He watches everyone, Draco," she continued, her voice dropping to a near-inaudible whisper. "He sees weakness like a bloodhound smells fear. Do not show it. Do not show anything."

Her words were meant to be a warning, a mother's desperate plea for her son's survival. But to Draco, they felt like another set of bars being locked into place. Be nothing. Feel nothing. Show nothing. He looked at her, at the fear she was trying so hard to mask with maternal command, and he saw his own future. A life spent in the shadows, terrified of a master's whim. It was no different from the slow rot of the garden around them.

"I understand," he said, the words hollow.

Narcissa held his gaze for a moment longer, her own eyes filled with a desperate, unspoken plea. Then, as if she could bear it no longer, she turned. "Good," she said, her back to him. "Now finish your work and come inside. You are needed."

She walked away without another word, her silver robes gliding over the dead leaves, a spectre of elegance in a world of decay. Draco watched her go, the cold in his stomach tightening into a knot of ice. He was needed. The words hung in the air, heavy and ominous, far more chilling than the damp November air. He was needed for what?

Draco dropped the trowel. It landed with a dull thud on the packed earth. He didn’t bother wiping his hands on his trousers as he walked back towards the house, the mud on his face feeling like a brand. The heavy oak door swung open before he reached it, pulled by an unseen house-elf. The air inside the Manor was no warmer than it had been in the garden; it was just a different kind of cold. A still, silent cold that smelled of dust and fear.

He expected to be sent to the drawing room, where Bellatrix and the Carrows often held court, doling out orders and casual cruelties. Instead, a trembling Dobby appeared at the end of the hall, his huge eyes wide with terror. The elf did not speak, only gestured with a shaking finger towards the west wing. Towards his father’s study.

A fresh wave of dread washed over Draco. No one used the study anymore. Not since the Dark Lord had made the Manor his headquarters. The room had been his father’s sanctuary, a place of polished mahogany and dark leather, where Lucius Malfoy had commanded his influence with the stroke of a quill. To be summoned there now felt like being called to a tomb.

He pushed the door open. The room was dark, the heavy velvet curtains drawn tight against the weak afternoon light. A single lamp on the desk cast a sickly yellow glow, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. The room had been neglected. A thin layer of grey coated every surface, and the familiar scent of old books and expensive brandy had been replaced by something stale and airless.

Lucius was standing by the fireplace, staring into the cold, empty hearth. He wasn’t wearing his fine robes, just simple black trousers and a silk shirt that hung loosely on his diminished frame. His long, white-blond hair was dull, lacking its usual sheen, and when he finally turned, Draco had to suppress a flinch. His father looked like a ghost. His skin was sallow, stretched tight over his sharp cheekbones, and his grey eyes, usually so cold and imperious, were shadowed and restless. They darted around the room, never quite settling on Draco.

"Your mother spoke to you," Lucius said. It was not a question. His voice was a dry rustle, a pale imitation of its former commanding tone.

"Yes," Draco said.

"Then you understand our position." Lucius ran a hand over his face, a gesture of weariness so profound it seemed to pain him. "He is not a forgiving master. Our... past failures have left a stain. One that is not easily washed away."

Draco remained silent, his hands clenching at his sides. He knew what this was. This was the prelude to a demand. A groveling, desperate attempt to regain favour.

"An opportunity has presented itself," Lucius continued, finally forcing his eyes to meet Draco's. The contact was brief, flickering away almost immediately. "An opportunity to demonstrate our renewed commitment. To prove that the Malfoy name is still one of value."

"What opportunity?" Draco asked, his voice barely a whisper.

Lucius straightened his shoulders, a pathetic attempt to reclaim some of his old authority. The movement was stiff, unnatural. "There is a raid tonight. An Order safe house. Bellatrix is leading it." He paused, letting the name hang in the air like a threat. "The Dark Lord has... suggested... that you participate."

The air left Draco’s lungs. The cold dread in his stomach became a knot of pure, sickening terror. A raid. Not observing from the trees. Not polishing boots. A full raid, with Bellatrix. With killing curses and screams and the smell of blood and burning.

"I..." he started, his throat closing up. "I'm not—"

"You are," Lucius snapped, his voice suddenly sharp, cracking like a whip. For a second, a flash of the old Lucius was there—cold, cruel, and absolute. "This is not a request, Draco. It is a command. It is our chance. Your chance. You will go. You will fight. You will show them what you are made of. You will show them you are your father's son and a true servant of the Dark Lord."

The words were hollow, desperate. He was not ordering Draco to be a soldier; he was ordering him to be a sacrifice. A piece to be played in their pathetic game of survival. The life of his son was the only currency Lucius had left to spend.

"They will be watching you," Lucius said, his voice dropping back to that conspiratorial rustle. He took a shuffling step forward, his eyes wild with a feverish desperation. "Every spell you cast, every moment of hesitation. You cannot fail. I will not permit you to fail. The fate of this family rests on you tonight. Do you understand what I am telling you?"

Draco looked at the man before him—this broken, terrified stranger who wore his father’s face. He saw the full depth of their fall. They were no longer masters of their own destiny. They were puppets, and their strings were being pulled by madmen.

He could only nod. The word was stuck in his throat, choked by the terror that was now rising, flooding his chest, stealing his breath.

"Good." Lucius looked relieved, as if Draco’s silent acquiescence was a victory. He turned away, dismissing him. "Go to your room. Prepare yourself. You will be summoned after dark."

Draco walked out of the study without being dismissed. He moved like an automaton, his legs carrying him through the silent, cavernous halls of his own home. Every step echoed on the cold marble. The portraits of his ancestors watched him pass, their painted eyes seeming to follow him with a mixture of pity and contempt. They were figures of power, of influence, of pure-blood pride. He was a boy being sent to do a madwoman’s bidding to pay for his father’s mistakes. The gilded frames and opulent tapestries were no longer symbols of his heritage; they were the bars of his cage.

He didn’t stop until he reached the heavy oak door of his own bedroom. For a moment, he simply stood before it, his hand hovering over the cool silver handle. This room had once been his sanctuary, a place where he was master. Now it was just a cell, albeit a well-appointed one. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it firmly behind him. The click of the latch was deafeningly final. He was alone.

The silence did not bring peace. It was a thick, suffocating thing, amplifying the frantic beat of his own heart. His eyes fell on the large, ornate mirror that hung over his mahogany dresser. He walked towards it, drawn by a morbid curiosity, a need to see the creature his father had just condemned.

The reflection that stared back was almost a stranger’s. The face was his, but it was hollowed out, all sharp angles and pale, translucent skin. His eyes, usually a cool, confident grey, were wide and dark, pupils blown with a terror he could feel in the base of his spine. His lips were bloodless. He saw a tremor in his own hand as he raised it, and he pressed his fingertips against the cold glass, as if to confirm the image was real. The boy in the mirror did the same, his expression one of sheer, naked fear. This was not Draco Malfoy, heir to a proud and powerful line. This was prey.

His gaze dropped to his left forearm, covered by the sleeve of his shirt. He didn’t need to see it to feel it. The Dark Mark was a constant presence, a cold spot on his skin that sometimes burned with a phantom itch, a reminder of who owned him. He was branded cattle. Tonight, he was being led to slaughter, or worse, being forced to become a butcher himself.

He could already hear it. The chaos of a raid. The manic, high-pitched shriek of his aunt’s laughter as she cast her curses. The smell of scorched earth and blood. He imagined her turning to him, her wild eyes pinning him in place, her wand raised. “Do it, Draco! Show the Dark Lord your worth! Crucio!”

A violent shudder wracked his body, and he stumbled back from the mirror, his stomach churning with bile. Could he do it? Could he point his wand at a stranger—a man, a woman, a child—and utter the word? Could he inflict that kind of pain, become that kind of monster, just to survive another day in this house? The thought was more terrifying than any curse that could be aimed at him.

His mind flashed, unbidden, to the day before. To the skirmish in the woods. He saw Potter, his face grim with determination, shielding Granger as he fired off spells. They fought with a desperate, righteous fury. They were fighting for something. For each other. He was being sent to fight for nothing more than the chance to appease a monster, to perhaps keep his mother safe for one more night. Potter’s fight had meaning. His was just a command performance of cruelty.

Draco sank onto the edge of his perfectly made bed, the silk coverlet cold beneath his trembling hands. He stared at the closed door, waiting. The dread was a physical weight, pressing down on his chest, making it hard to breathe. He was needed. He would be summoned. And when he was, he would go, because he had no other choice. He would walk into the night and become whatever they demanded of him, and he was terrified he wouldn’t recognize himself when the sun rose again. If it rose for him at all.