By The Light Of A Dying Flame ~ Drarry Fanfic

Chapter 2: Draco

Draco had known pain before. He'd been tortured by the Dark Lord himself, had served as target practice for Bellatrix since he was old enough to walk, and had been smacked by his father's cane enough times that the sound of its tapping sent him flinching like Pavlov's dog.

He had not, however, known pain like this.

His chest burned as if it had been sliced through with fire. His eyes opened, but he saw only darkness. He tasted his own blood in his mouth, the bitter, metallic tang of it, and the salty heat clogged his throat and lungs until he thought he'd drown. He didn't know where he'd ended up when he'd Apparated with Potter, but it didn't matter—not when he would surely die from this blistering agony.

A voice floated somewhere above him, rapping on the periphery of his consciousness: "You fucking fool, Malfoy! Absolute twat."

If this was heaven, God certainly had a mouth on him.

On second thought, he was most certainly going to hell.

Someone was touching him with insistent fingers, perhaps trying to staunch the blood flowing from his chest. The darkness began to dissipate, leaving behind a fuzzy haze through which he could make out indistinct shapes and blurry movement. He tried to speak, but the words gurgled in his throat. The pressure on his chest increased, so intense that a black wave washed over him with a renewed vengeance.

The only thing he managed to discern before the darkness swallowed him whole was a pair of angry green eyes.

***

He dreamed of a giant wizard's chess board. The black and white squares stretched out in front of him until they met the horizon of a cloudless, starless night sky. He could just barely make out the hazy outline of the staggering chess pieces behind the blurry glass of the window through which he peered. He gazed at their jerky movements as they seemed caught in a player less game, until he realized the shaking was not the pieces themselves, but the movement of his own body. He was on a train. Voices fell and rushed over one another behind him, but he could not tear his gaze from the window, his gray eyes fixed as if hypnotized on the ghost like figures of the chess pieces, the violence of their match. He swayed like a transfixed snake curling upward from a basket, watching as a knight smashed a pawn to smithereens. Only when he felt a hand on his shoulder did the spell break, the train shuddering to an urgent, screeching stop. A deep horror settled in his bones, and Draco began to turn, dreading what he was about to see from the fogged reflection in the glass—

Sleep pulled away from him with the violence of a blindfold being torn from his eyes. He blinked into the dim light, struggling against the heaviness of his own body. Shadows undulated on the walls, and he turned to see a small flame burning in an oil lamp across from him. He was lying on wooden slats, the leg of his trouser snagged in a crooked nail. His stomach churned as if he were still on the train.

"You're awake."

Draco jerked his head to see Potter staring at him from the other side of the small room. His face had returned to its normal proportions but was still streaked with dried blood. His hair—ordinarily unkempt in even the best of times—fell around his sharp cheekbones and past his chin in shaggy waves. The light from the oil lamp refracted off his round glasses, veiling his green eyes.

Draco tried to sit up, but a bolt of pain lanced through his chest, and he collapsed heavily against the floor, a jacket wedged under his head as a makeshift pillow. "What happened?" he asked, his voice scratchy from disuse. His mouth tasted like salt and gore.

"You attacked me," Potter said coldly, "before I could reach Dobby. I Apparated myself out of there, but with you holding onto me and resisting, it's lucky we didn't both end up Splinched."

Draco's hand flew to his chest, his palm flat against the thick cloth of bandaging wrapped around his sternum. Potter watched the movement, his expression inscrutable in the shadows. "You nearly bled to death," he continued. "I didn't have any essence of dittany, or you might've been fine. It's all I could do to keep the wound from getting infected." He stopped, something like panic flashing across his face, before he added, "Hermione is the one who took care of these things."

Draco felt the absurd desire to laugh. "You mean you've been trying to keep me alive?" he asked, staring at Potter. "Why?"

"It's a mystery to me, as well."

With painstaking slowness, Draco propped himself up on his elbows. "Why didn't you leave?"

"Because then you'd be dead," Potter replied flatly. He glared at Draco, his legs pulled against his chest and hands resting on his knees. "You could just thank me."

"You should've let me rot," Draco said abruptly, the words tumbling from his mouth before he could stop them.

Potter's inky eyebrows shot up. He regarded Draco carefully, before pushing himself up to standing, throwing his face into deeper shadow. "I still can."

Draco chuckled darkly, but a prickle of alarm trilled in his stomach. "You're too much of a bloody hero for that, Potter," he said, the word rolling off his tongue like a slur.

Potter pulled a wand from his pocket, and in the dimness, it took Draco a moment to realize it was his own. Potter twirled the wand in his fingers, glancing back over at Draco. "Something about you, Malfoy, makes me want to play the villain." He pointed the hawthorn wand at him, his face a chiseled block of cold stone. "Stupefy."

The world went black again.