Bitter With The Sweet

Jump 17

Time was running out. Time was always running out.

Despite his near constant craving for control, Draco had been completely untethered for months. Three, to be exact. Three months dominated by seventeen heart-lurching, mind-bending interruptions. Seventeen jumps, as he called them, since his education at Hogwarts had skipped over all talk of traversing the multiverse. Not that a professor droning on about it in theory would have done him much good.

No, by now, he was quite certain that nothing in this lifetime or the next would've ever prepared him for experiencing it in motion.

His first jump had been utterly bewildering and ever since, he had been forced to adjust. Fast. But it was no easy feat when no two jumps were ever the same. Each starkly varying in length, their duration impossible to pre-empt or govern. Worse yet, he never had any clue where he was even going, which was half the trouble when he arrived. Often enough, in the most awkward circumstances.

Still, he had one small solace. His departure was always closely preceded by a shiver juddering down his spine. Some crippling phantom awareness that whispered, time's up, right before he was wrenched from one reality and spliced into the next.

Granted, what was already an uncomfortable process, was made even more unpleasant since he was being dragged against his will. Every. Single. Time. But that was simply the way this thing worked. Operating over his head and without his say-so. And since the discomfort of jumping ranked somewhere between apparating drunk and a fatal splinching, it also took a strong stomach and some mettle to get used to.

Which is why, after several particularly relentless weeks without pause, he was keen to indulge in some much-needed rest. Up until recently, there had been some hope, some guileless anticipation that simply wondered when this would all be over. When he would jump back to the start, where he belonged. But quickly, he was becoming desperate, agitated. His hope dwindling.

Despite tirelessly obsessing over every detail, there was no clear solution, no clue to returning home by his own means. Time and again, he unspooled the hours that led up to his first jump, until there was nothing left to pick apart. Entirely alone in his investigation, ruminating on the same lines of enquiry, all to cycle back to the same conclusion.

He was fucked. Completely, utterly fucked.

Without anyone else to confide in, he was spiralling. Badly. He was used to being alone, rarely seeking counsel and only entertaining company when it served his needs, but this was different. Blaise would not be turning up, unannounced, just to rouse him back to life. Not even his mother and her watchful gaze could find him here.

It was completely out of character, but he'd even begun to crave company like never before and it irked him. He didn't like to depend on others, but having the option stripped away, felt debilitating. Isolating. Challenging, unlike the absolute security he was used to. With no wand, no allies, no clear enemy to blame or obvious antidote for this shocking condition, it was tricky to see what more he could do but hope some grand solution would eventually materialise.

In the midst of this, he wished for a break in the pattern. A longer stay. A gap between jumps that was so stagnant and boring, he grew restless. Although he wasn't the type to believe in luck - only his recurring misfortune - he had quietly prayed that fate (or whatever cruel master was responsible for all this) afforded him more time to think. To come up with some ingenious plan in the lull between hours.

Just three days prior, it had felt like things might finally be going in his favour, when he arrived in this sleepy northern village. It was somewhere he suspected he'd passed through as a boy, with tightly thatched roofs, wild roaming livestock and heather growing in every pocket of untilled land. It was quaint. Charming, even. Mostly uninhabited but as he'd come to expect, home to her.