Bitter Transmutation : Cruel Transformation || Drarry

Part 10

(Earlier that day)

Draco leaned his weight against the fireplace mantle and took a shaky breath.

Potter was long gone when he finally went upstairs to his room. He fully intended to lay down and try to rest, but he found himself walking over to the balcony doors, unlatching them and pushing them open, shivering as the cold air rolled over him.

The sun had set hours ago, but the lights from the castle cast a glow onto the grounds below like a candle, made even brighter by the snow falling in puffs of white that settled onto Draco's shoulders and hair.

Draco stepped out to the bannister wall, his socks growing wet, his sore feet at first soothed and then stinging from the cold. He didn't notice. All he saw was the edges of the forest and the long curve of Black lake. The uneasy restlessness that had been creeping under his skin the for last two days suddenly flooded through him, filling him like a tidal wave, and he finally understood it. It was being cooped up inside because of a storm that would not ease, it was being bedbound to let a potion finish healing a broken arm, it was the need to get out, to run until the air burned in his throat, to be free.

Draco felt a prickle start between his shoulders and spread down his arms, heat following in its wake. Slowly, slowly, it moved without burning, without the mixture of fear and aggression he felt when he met Fleur. The prickle grew stronger, into a pulse, into a thrum of heat that moved with his heartbeat. An uncomfortable feeling of things being pulled and stretched that were never meant to be stretched, a feeling he remembered acutely from being turned into a ferret, and the terror that followed from being pummelled against the ground like a ragdoll.

He squeezed his eyes shut, he couldn't look, he didn't want to see it. He tried to grab the edge of the bannister with hands that could not grip or grab and were too long and- Draco leaned over the stone, his stomach heaving violently and emptying itself of his dinner. He gasped weakly and spat to try and rid himself of the taste in his mouth. He could hear fabric tearing like tissue paper as his shirt ripped, and his arms were exposed to the open air.

The thrumming furnace of heat and magic that was filling him almost reminded him of the first time he held his wand and his magic seemed to pour out of him in a rain sparks. Vaguely comforting, vaguely horrifying, that this was his magic, that it was always like this, always meant to betray him like this. He squeezed his eyes shut harder, so the tears couldn't escape, so he saw spots of light dancing behind his eyes until the thrumming heat ebbed and all that was left was the snow soaking into his clothing.

Draco opened his eyes. There was- he reached up to touch his face but where his thumb used to be was a talon black as ink, the light from inside caught the curve of it as it came to a needlelike point. The rest of his fingers were- he spread them and saw the thin skin stretched between delicate-looking bones that were longer than he could make his mind understand. His stomach roiled, and he looked away, down at his feet. His socks had been torn to ribbons. His feet were talons like an owl's, each black claw as long as a knife.

Draco lifted his thumb, what used to be his thumb, and hooked it over the smooth hard thing on his face, the curve of it, familiar and sharp as every other point on his body. He opened his mouth, the beak of a thing on him, his stomach twisting inside him and coming up empty. He no longer had lips to spit the bile from his mouth. He no longer had the right tongue to taste it.

Like a lion that kills people, the veela had said.

A bitter wind went past, and Draco shivered. He felt it and raised his arms, spreading his hands. The wind filled the horrible wing-like things, and the feeling caught in his throat.