For The Greater Good (A Draco Malfoy Story)

T is for Trauma

        They really had no regard for human life.

I had woken soon enough to feel myself being thrown into a jail cell like a sack of potatoes, my shoulder making painful impact and my face scraping against the stone floor. I cried out through the filthy gag they had managed to put into my mouth and felt vomit begin to crawl up my throat from the pain and the disgust. A putrid stench assaulted me from every corner.

Don't you dare, I thought to myself fiercely. Don't you dare throw up. Forcing myself to swallow the bile in my throat, I shuddered and tried to ignore the splitting pain in my shoulder to focus on my surroundings. I was in a small cell with stone walls and no windows, just a bench that went around the perimeter and a bunch of long bags strewn in a heap in the corners. My vision had gone blurry for a second and I blinked several times for it to subside but it was going slower than I expected. Even the stinging on my face from the scrapes hadn't gone away yet. I focused on the bags to regain my sight but when it did, I wish it hadn't. The bags weren't bags at all.

They were bodies.

Judging from the smell, they had been dead for a few days. Tears began to well up in my eyes but I shook them away. Every part of me wanted to shrink and turn away but I forced myself to crawl awkwardly on my forearms towards the careless pile of bodies and looked at the one on top. It was a man with blonde hair as thin as straw and a face that might've been handsome had it not gone blue and ashen. His tongue was swollen in his blue mouth and his brown eyes stared unseeing in my direction. Holding my breath, I looked closer and realized he was wearing a policeman's uniform. I looked at the rest of the bodies and saw that half of them were clothed in uniform and half of them were in their undershirts and boxers. One female body was stark naked and dangling off of the bench.

They were muggles. People. Humans with lives, families and histories. The Death Eaters had taken all of that away, thrown them into a jail cell and stripped them of their dignity as if they were an alien race. Not humans. Not people who were made of flesh and bone as they were, who bled and laughed and fought and breathed as they did.

The blonde man's badge read "Captain Radcliffe."

I pressed my forehead against the floor and cried for Captain Radcliffe and these brave men and women. I cried for their families, who would never know what happened to them or why. I cried for the fear that erupted in their hearts before they were killed and the words left unspoken to their loved ones marked on their now swollen tongues.

When my eyes had gone dry, I rolled over onto my back and tried to wipe my snot on my shoulder since my hands were tied behind my back. I wept all I could for these heroes but now it was time to make sure this hadn't happened for nothing. I closed my eyes, trying to calm my breathing and steady my thoughts. I focused on using my magic to break the bonds around my hands and ankles but I felt nothing. No surge of energy, no whisper of power. Nothing.

I spent ten minutes like that, going nearly purple in the face from trying to concentrate but nothing happened. Slightly panicking, I looked at my jail cell and realized that the air felt thicker in here. When I moved my bound legs, I felt as if I was kicking through water.

"No use in that, lovely," a cockney accent spoke from behind the bars of the cell. It was the prickly man from outside the cafe, his yellow teeth grinning at me. "Got a mighty fine dampenin' charm on this cell. J'know what that means?" He leaned his ugly face until they were between the bars, making me wish he'd get stuck there. "Means no magic. Yer just a filffy muggle now."

I tried to speak but the gag constricted me and I felt rage boil up to the surface of my skin because of it. The only satisfaction I could take as the man walked away laughing was that even without magic, they considered me enough of a threat to bind me hand and foot. I'll get you, little man. I'll get you.

Draco.

"Will you stop fucking pacing? It's driving me mad," I snapped at Gabriel who was mucking up the tacky carpet in our room. We had booked a room in an inn by the police station as we couldn't very well plan how to storm into a Death Eater base in a cafe.

Gabriel ignored me. His hair stuck up on ends and he had a certain madness looming in his eyes. I could see animal and man were warring with each other inside him. He probably wanted nothing more than to charge into the station as a bloody Bengal tiger.

"I don't see why I can't just fucking --"

"Because you'll get stunned before you can even lift a paw, you absolute dimwit. And then where will we be? Bloody good that'll do you, me or Rose," I scowled at him.

He gnashed his teeth at me and moved to the window where we had a perfect view of the station. "They've probably got her unconscious or some sort of dampening charm on her because I can't hear her. Usually I can just hear her as clear as my conscience but now I can only hear myself. I can still feel her there though, at the back of my mind. It's like someone cut down a tree but left the roots."

I considered the thought of having a mental connection with Rose and hearing her every whenever I could. Would it be easier talking to her with my thoughts, I wondered, than it is in person? What would it be like to be connected so wholly to her that I'd hear her thoughts, feel her emotions and share my strength with her.

I froze, grasping onto the thought desperately like a lifejacket in the middle of the ocean. "Alvers."

"What?" he snapped. "Am I annoying you by looking out the window too?"

"Alvers, shut up. I've got an idea."

I saw his back straighten immediately and he rushed over to me. "What? What is it?"

"Have you ever used your mental connection with Rose to help each other? I mean, have you ever shared your power?"

His brows furrowed. "What, like leeching her power?"

"No," I frowned at him. Was he always this thick? "I mean sending her some strength or energy."

His eyes widened as he turned back to the window. "I don't...I don't think so. At least, I've never been aware of it. Rose does this thing where she heals people by giving a piece of her to them. Kind of like you said, sharing energy and strength."

"I know."

I watched as he glanced down at my forearm before looking back up. Thankfully, he said nothing about it. "But she's always been touching people when she does that. I'm not as powerful as her, how do you think I could pull something like that off from this great of distance with no physical contact?"

"It's worth a damn shot. Now, focus."