The Darkwood Wand

Pain

WARNING: This chapter contains violence, references to sexual assault and dark themes related to mental illness.

Thank you to Anne Ammons for her insights on this chapter.

Draco heard a distant clock toll the one o'clock hour. The night deepened, the infirmary's lamps dimmed further and the bright moon retreated. Shadows grew longer. Hermione had not returned—the Vanishing Spell had whisked her away early, most likely. The Skele-Gro's fiery pain finally subsided and Draco lay his head on the pillow with a sigh, pulling the thin white blanket around him.

He stared up into the near darkness, wrapping his mind around his sudden deliverance from a lifetime of wolfsbane and raw meat. He wasn't a monster. He wasn't even tainted. He was sound and whole. Draco gripped his wounded shoulder with his other hand and felt hardly a twinge.

She came to me, kissed me.

I could ask her, if we could ...

She might want to be ...

Even after we break the ...

No, the Malfoy voice said, cold and hard. She's not for you.

Draco closed his eyes. Will you solve all my mysteries? he'd once asked Vane. You'll like it in the dark. Hermione had plumbed the depths of him, she'd liked it in the dark. But she didn't belong there. She would leave. Her future had no place for a wizard who was harsh and cold and hated by all.

He turned over on the cot, grunting as his ankle struck the metal bed frame. And what about your future, Draco?

The picture was crystal clear. He would return to Malfoy Manor after graduation. He would complete his probation. He would take care of his mother. He would have meaningless secret encounters. No marriage. No family. Just dark, quiet evenings alone as the years spun by. He would sit in his manor's expansive library, drink in hand, and think of a night long gone, his breath catching at the memory of honey-gold eyes across a wooden table. And a golden card. "UNDER CONSIDERATION."

A hitch in his chest and a ragged sob brought Draco back to his surroundings, his shivering body curled on the bed . Enough. He sat up and arranged the inadequate pillow behind his back. Taking a sip of water, he eyed the bedside table. Draco intended to have a few words with that old loon about the darkwood wand, and about that bloody harlequin as well. Hermione could have been killed. He could have been killed. Reckless, dangerous, irresponsible to sell such wands ...

The silent rant soothed Draco's nerves; he did his best thinking at night. And his worst thinking, too, he admitted, remembering a particular night when he lay awake in bed brooding over Vane's indiscretions and eyeing the darkwood bedposts.

A slight movement made him sit up. It could have been a draft against a curtain, or a mouse, but Draco knew that sound. It was the soft rustle, the faint breath of an unconscious person just beginning to stir. He'd heard it often enough at the manor.

Softly he placed his bare feet on the floor, indifferent to the icy stone. Tennant's heavy shape was dimly lit, but Draco could see the wizard's hands twitching almost imperceptibly. Potter's Body-Bind Curse was wearing off, although he was still bound with ropes. Tennant was waking up.

A familiar coldness settled over Draco and he looked over at his bedside table again. No. He padded to the curtain separating his ward from the rest of the infirmary. He slipped through and there was Isobel, looking achingly small and vulnerable in her own cot. But Isobel wasn't his mission; the prize lay beside her bed atop a tall stack of parchment. In no time at all he was back beside Tennant's cot, Isobel's chestnut wand in hand.