Veritas Vos Liberabit [Drarry Fanfiction]

Always on the Run

July, 1999. Port St. Lucie, Florida

The sun was slowly settling down over the seashore and the sky was suddenly painted in brilliant shades of pink and orange. Wayward seagulls were quarreling somewhere in the distance. The waves were leisurely rolling onto the abandoned beach and ebbing away just barely touching his bare feet.

Draco was blissfully high. He stretched out his arms, feeling the wind rippling on the thin fabric of his standard-issue cotton long-sleeve shirt. His vision was a bit blurry from the drugs but he was still lucid enough to enjoy this sunset. He didn't have the slightest idea what he had taken or how much of it for that matter, but somehow he wanted more. Needed more. The abyss before him did not look frightening, it was inviting. The sound of the ocean was beckoning him, lulling his sense of self-preservation and whispering a false promise that as soon as he stepped forward everything would be over... His pain, his complete lack of control, his nightmarish past, and even more sinister future would all disappear beneath the water surface.

The smell of sea-salt and the strong iodine scent of seaweed hit his nostrils and a strong shiver ripped through his body. Draco realized that he was already up to his waist in the water, his clothes were floating around him like dead jellyfish. He gave out a desperate sort of laugh and looked back towards the shore. The beach was completely empty. Nobody would be able to save him if he moved forward.

Draco's mind wandered to his poor mother, how devastated she would be to see him gone. He didn't want to die, but that was sort of inevitable, he was too drugged to care, the tide was pulling him further away from the beach and he wasn't a very skilled swimmer.

He was submerged to his chin. There was sea-salt on his lips and his eyes started to water from irritation. He took a deep breath and tried lying down, that way he wouldn't drown. The water flowed into his ears and suddenly the world became muffled. His body was weightless on the surface of the ocean. He felt like a piece of driftwood slowly mowing with the tide. Draco closed his eyes and felt the tears slowly trickling down his cheeks, drops of salty water in the ocean of salt.

He imagined his face once more. It looked blurry and grainy like the photograph from a newspaper clipping. His messy nest of dark hair, his ridiculous round spectacles, and his sheepish grin. He remembered how he didn't buy any of it.

Draco wondered if he died at that moment, would Harry come for him, shake him back to reality and convince him in the no-nonsense voice that he was indeed alive. He didn't want to speculate and hope and dream about him anymore, he wanted to greet the darkness and to disappear into the nothingness of the ocean.

... Somebody was splashing in the water next to him, somebody's hands were painfully gripping his unresponsive limbs and dragging him out of the water. Somebody's lips were on his, warm and human, breathing life into his shivering body.

"You are mental, Malfoy," he heard and for a moment he thought it was Harry himself looking at him with an exasperated expression on his face. "Come on, let's go before the nurses kick us both out."

The dark-haired lad wasn't Potter...

***

March 1999, England

He felt a sharp pull of the seat-belt on his chest and midriff as the moving car came to a sudden halt. His head hit something soft and big and inflated as he heard the windshield crack dangerously. He gingerly tried moving his arms, pushing away the annoying airbag, and looked towards the driver's seat. The other person was alive but there was blood on his hiking jacket.

"Harry..." the lad at the steering wheel asked in a strained voice. "Are you alright?"

The Gryffindor glanced around in a haze. They crashed into something on the stolen ambulance.