Draco Malfoy and the Alcoholic's Wish

The ghost of a smile

I begged and begged them to let me return to my own room- the place didn't exactly hold happy memories- quite the opposite, but I couldn't stand the busy hospital wing, and the introvert in me craved the echoing hallways and silent dormitory. Besides, I felt like I was being haunted for a reason- me being away from all them wasn't a reward, I didn't deserve one. Hogwarts was my prison, and I didn't belong anywhere else.

But Snape, and McGonagall, when she arrived, told me that I couldn't- if they could they would, but I needed time to recover, for my body to adjust to the lack of alcohol I was no longer receiving. So I had to stay put like a good little boy, for a whole week, until I was deemed well enough to mingle with society.

The best times were at night, and even these were plagued by night terrors. Delightfully, the eerie silence drifted along the corridors like thick fog, and the view from the windows remained- great rolling forests that were filled with great monsters and beasts that could terrorise my nightmares. Yet I preferred these to the questions, the stares, the endless drugs. During the night they would wear off, and, yes, I was in a lot of pain, but that just made me feel even more like myself from before.

The nightmares weren't as real in snt Mungos. They were dulled by strong repressant drugs that were digested without me realising, but now I was back at school I was no longer forced to take them- I was well enough to take my new regiment of potions by hand, and didn't have to be supervised taking this one- why stop taking a drug that would guarantee me a good, nightmare free sleep?

"Consider yourself expelled!"

Dark curtains of hair swung too and fro, exposing shards of yellowing skin, the tired eyes sunken in but still focusing on me, his arms outstretched to grab my hand to look at him.

"We can help you, Draco"

A tall, aged looking man with a bear infested with maggots, a pair of crackled half moon glasses perched on the end of a bloodied nose. His limbs were horrifically mangled, as though he'd broken every bone in his body.

"He's just a boy."

An incredibly thin woman, her blond hair streaked with new bloody highlights, no longer looking at me with motherly concern, but a hungry glare, as though the wanted to devour me alive.

"Go on, Draco, kill him!"

A boy of just sixteen, still in his green-striped uniform, slumping along with the others, his face blackened and covered in burns, his eyes a flaming orange.

"Shove off, Malfoy"

The smallest of them all, his bony features a calciture of his real form, his fringe splitting at the front to reveal a thin scar and blank, staring eyes.

"Well done, Draco"

Tall and thin, his arms out wide like he was crucified, the final man looked the least human and the least dead, still managing to spread fear with blood tumbling from his lips and ash falling from his robes. 

"Aren't you a little old to be blaming other people for your mistakes?" 

Three women this time- two clearly sisters- the pain etched on their faces was near identical. One sister was wearing a plain nurse's uniform, the usually neat apron as bloody as a butcher's. The other two were less familiar- the woman behind was much other, and limped along side what could only be her daughter. All three looked at me with hooded eyes, painful looking ligatures still tied to their wrists and ankles.