PRECEDENT : Draco Malfoy II

63

Draco stumbles into the room. He collapses onto the bed next to me, one elbow propped up to him. Somewhere, muffled through deep waters, rushing waves, the crash of a storm in my ears, I can hear his voice.

You're okay. Marty, please. You're safe now. Please. Marty, please.

My body isn't capable of moving. I've become a puddle, soaking into the mattress. At least I'm something.

The more I feel him next to me, the more I realize I exist. He does, after all. I can feel his hands on my face. I can feel his breath on my cheek. The warmth of his body radiates through mine. Draco is real, absolutely, and he is hear, trembling, holding me. The taste of salt is on my lips, and I think they are his tears but they are probably mine. So, I exist too.

Draco holds me. Something creaks in the house, and Draco gets up, and cracks another spell at the Death Eater on the floor. The man isn't dead, I guess. The same should probably be said for me, but I'm not entirely sure. Draco leaves me, and the world feels empty. I can hear him moving, grabbing something that scraps off the floor.

I didn't think I was me anymore. Now I aware that there is a brain in my body, but I had forgotten it was anything except a conduit for pain.

"We have to go," he whispers.

I can hear his voice now, more clearly. I want to pull myself up but I don't think I can make my body move on its own.

Draco scoops me up into his arms. It had never occurred to me that he'd be strong enough to lift me. Holding me tightly to his chest, he waves his wand and apparates. My brain compresses into my head, and I don't think I'll complain much about apparating again.

We come to, and he keels over, balancing me on his knee. Slowly, he lies me down on the floor. Above my head, the lights are so bright compared to the dark room I was just in.

Draco lies down beside me.

"I'm okay," I croak out the sound.

When I blink, I force myself to occlude. Then, and only then, can I actually sit up. I get why he does it now, frequently. He's not hiding from me. He's hiding from his own mind.

"You don't have to be," he says.

My head hurts too much to cry. At the very least, occluding helps me exist again. I turn to him, bury my head in his chest, "I thought you weren't coming. I thought that you were dead."

He pulls back, looking at me, "I came. I came as fast as I could."

"You were gone close to an hour."

Draco cups my cheeks looking at my eyes, "I was gone less than ten minutes."

That's all it took. Ten minutes. In totality, since they searched for him for the first few, I was probably only tortured for five. And then time is with me again. How it pulls and pushes. How time is static but we aren't, at least it doesn't feel like our minds experience time in any uniform coordinated way.

"We can't go back there," he tells me. "I'll have to leave to set up a new location. Mopsy will watch you."

"Where are we?" I whisper the words.

"My bathroom."

I'm in Malfoy Manor.

He doesn't leave then. I had hoped he wouldn't. Instead, he holds my head against his, stroking my hair. There isn't much he says, but I can feel his heart thumping in his head. It feels good, even, like the tide against the shore.

"I need to get going," Draco whispers. "I bound the men and none of them saw me, but I need to get to Helena before they do."

"You should've killed them," I whisper to him.