The Scent Of Malice | drarry

forty two | rehab

April 17 1998

It's finally happened. The most terrifying thing in the world.

Draco stared numbly at the words he'd written in his art book, words he hadn't even managed to adorn with more than a vague serpent-like scribble.

He had known his parents would do something like this, but so soon? He closed his eyes and wished, not for the first time, that the darkness he saw when they were shut would surround him with open eyes too.

"I just want to stop seeing everything," he whispered to himself tearfully. "Because maybe then I wouldn't have to see what they did to my arm-"

He despised himself so much for permitting it to happen in the first place. It wasn't like he could really have said no, but to have actively allowed his parents to Mark his forearm the way they did... the way he'd been dreading it and then so readily accepted when the time came... it was hateful to remember.

"Be a good boy, Draco," his mother had whispered, while his father held up a clear bottle half filled with pearly looking liquid. They were stood at the end of his bed at the expensive rehab centre where he'd been for several days now, a place he'd already grown to hate.

"This is all yours if you make the right decision," Lucius had told his son in that stern, unfeeling tone. Draco didn't have to ask what was in the bottle but it was extremely clear that it wasn't just water. And he wanted it so badly.

I'm a teenager in fucking rehab and my parents are offering me ecstasy in exchange for my soul, he thought to himself. This is so surreal.

And he'd thought about it, really he had.

But his thirst was overwhelming, he craved the contents of the bottle in his father's grasp more than he needed oxygen, and in the end he couldn't stop himself from reaching his left hand out for it.

It was a familiar paternal image, and innocent enough on the surface: the age-old tableau of a father passing a bottle to his little boy.

Except this little boy was seventeen and losing his mind. And the bottle in the father's hand was not nourishment, but instead spiked with almost enough ecstasy to kill his son. And in taking it, Draco was signing an unspoken contract that would ruin his life.

As his fingers made contact with the flask, Draco's sleeve slipped up to reveal the beautiful untainted skin of his left forearm. His parents' eyes locked greedily onto it and the boy allowed himself nothing more than a slight pang of regret at the sight. It wasn't nearly enough to open the gaping chasm of sorrow inside him and let his pain pour out. And not enough to make him feel better, either.

But then he was drinking, and his parents were nodding approvingly, and the familiar bitter aftertaste of the elixir let him know that what he needed was in there. And it was good.

They let him hit the peak of his high before performing the spells to Mark him.

It still hurt, of course it did.

Anyone who says it doesn't hurt to have ink burned into the tissue of your arm with Dark Magic is a fucking liar, he wrote. It hurts like you're dying.

And anyone who says they didn't vomit afterwards is a braver man than me.

Or maybe they just weren't seventeen when it happened to them. Or maybe they managed to get higher beforehand than I did. God, I want to get high again.

Draco felt tears prick his eyes as he read his own words.

His mind slipped to Potter, as it so often did.

A quick glance at his page told him that he'd been absent-mindedly sketching the boy as he thought. There he was, only half-drawn, but unmistakably him. Angular features, open mouth, eyes that drank him right up. He was covered in love.

A sudden flash of white hot panic ran through Draco over the memory of what Harry might have seen in the book before. How long had he been sat there that morning? How had he managed to still love him afterwards?

He'd probably never kiss him again now he had the Mark. He won't love me again either, he thought. What if he's right, and I'll never find another like him?

A lifetime of flings and minor infatuations had at one point sounded very appealing to Draco, but having tasted love he knew he'd never go back.

He knows what I think about, Draco realised. What do I think about? I think about this Mark. Dying. My soul. His skin. My aching mouth.

He picked up his brush again, and sketched two large, long-lashed eyes right over the picture of Harry. If they were open the irises would have been grey. It's him, every time I close my fucking eyes, he wrote. He haunts me. Why does he haunt me?

He haunts me like all the things I could've done with his love if I wasn't so young and irresponsible and fucked it. I could have been loved so beautifully, I know that. If I'd let him.

We could have had a love worth writing hundreds of novels about. Maybe we still could. People tend to like tragedies better anyway, don't they?

If I'd let him.

Tears were dripping onto the words as he wrote now, but he didn't stem them.

No point stemming ink or tears, he wrote, especially when they convey the same thing.

And what they convey is my fucking misery. I've lived too much in these short years, and not always in the right way. And now I'm seventeen and my life is over.

I wonder if Harry's thinking about me too. I hope he is. If he was here right now, I reckon I'd say I love him.

If he'd let me.

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a/n: sorry for the late update but thanks for reading, please vote and comment as ever!!!

lots of love🤍🤍

~ paradisedraco