Ascendio
- lifts caster into the air -
FINGERTIPS THAT ARE NOT HIS TWIRL HIS HAIR and dance around his neck. Hot fleeting touches graze his neck and pull away before he can recognize the bearer.
Who?... Why?
The memory slips through his mind again, ripe for the plucking. The gaping holes in his memory were filled with all the wrong memories. Malfoy tried to match a face to the intimate form he felt... There are no answers.
He turned sharply in bed, his sheets pulling him in a tight cocoon. Voices wisp under the crack in his door and mangle his thoughts into an ugly discord. The memory slid away.
"It'll be alright-"
"Narcissa, you saw the way the Dark Lord acted... he-"
They brushed against his nerves. Malfoy slowly sat up in his bed, his ears well attuned to the familiar tones of his parents. Alarm chimes rang through his entire body.
"Lucius, please-"
"Don't take that tone with me, dear. You know the sacrifice we as a family must make. The sacrifice he must make.... It's time you remembered what we are asked to do."
Malfoy tugged his sticky shirt off and prepared.
****
In a strange way, Malfoy relished the beatings.
They each had a beginning, climax, and end. A rhythm he could count through his fingertips. Their predictability was stable in his life. After the beatings, there were a few days of solitude. Days of peace. He would find his father lounging with his mother peacefully. All he had to do was endure.
Malfoy could typically tell when the end was coming. His fathers face would flush from exertion, his blows becoming softer, then he would resort to magic.
The moon was wide and cold against the pitch night. His inhale sent sharp pricks of ice air down his throat. Malfoy clung to the stone slabs of the balcony and grit his teeth.
This beating was atypical. The moment his Father entered his room, Malfoy saw the black bruises swelling around his throat...
The Dark Lord met with his Father earlier...
Had he- strangled...
He knew better than to ask why the beatings occurred. Narcissa's eyes were blurry. Her hands were ruby from picking at her nails. She had looked at him with a pitied stare before scuttling away- always leaving... before-
Be still. His nails tore through his calluses.
"Look at me, son."
Malfoys chin flopped towards his Father, and his leg blossomed with further pain.
"Your prior weakness must be resolved."
Ended. Completed. He forced more synonyms through his thought process to dull the reality.
A soft hand grazed his chin, brushing against it in a manner his mother often did. His Father repositioned his grip on the old table leg and tapped it against his leg.
"You understand?"
"Yes, Father." Malfoy said to the moon.
His Father tapped the wood against his leg a few times, as if he was revving up, and then he drew back. A loud crack followed as the wood hit against his knee.
"Oh my word. Hold still."
"Get off me you bitch."
"No- you're hurt."
Soft hands coated his bruises and honey eyes gazed down on him. The air was lukewarm and faintly smelled of citrus and blood. The fear of being touched was overwhelmed by the pain his body was in.
"Please," the voice continued.
*****
Darkness had a taste. A brawny clay taste that coated his eyes and bled through his soul. His fingers moved against stone and mortar.
The last thing he remembered was the cold stone steadying his body. Malfoy realized he was on the floor still. His vision was dark. His fingers traced around him, searching for a bedframe. Narcissa would have taken him back to his room.
Pain eclipsed at his knee and a tingling sensation tore through his extremities.
His fingers traced the brick patchwork, dragging himself toward nothingness.
"Who is there?"
Malfoy stiffened against the ripe sound of Granger's voice.
...Granger?
No...no... His hands clawed, pulling his limp legs behind him. Toward a bed. A frame.
God, this had to be a cruel joke. A feverish dream. He could not be down here. He ignored sound of her breathing. His hands spiraling toward a bed-
His fingers smacked into stone. Memories fought out of their locked cages, millions circling him. Drowning him in the past. His tongue lapped the backings of his throat to control the rising bile.
Breathe... Breath...
Of all people, of all places... He ruffled through both pockets.
His wand was gone.
F*ck.
He was in the basement.
He was locked in the basement with her.
YOU ARE READING
crybaby
RomanceHe would kill her. It was his task- his destiny. He despised her. He'd killed hundreds and dragged their corpses to the pit. She would be another tally marked; another body tossed aside. But her words haunted him even as she lived. "You need me."
