In Freeing The Bound

In Freeing the Bound:

Draco Malfoy stood, silent, on the outskirts of the crowd of inner circle Death Eaters. They were all robed and masked, awaiting instructions or a reason for their presence in the sitting room of Malfoy Manner. Their Lord was before them, a cloaked prisoner at his side, and his unexplained joyous satisfaction was seeping into each of his followers like a lethal injection through their marks. Draco wanted to rub at the dark mark on his arm, but he refrained. Moving would draw attention to himself and attention amongst these people was always a bad thing. He was standing in the back of the throng- to the left- leaning casually and carefully against the doorframe as he surveyed his master’s jerky actions.


The Dark Lord’s serpentine face was lit with a distorted sense of glee and he reached down toward the kneeling hostage with one long fingered hand. They watched as he grabbed the top of the cloak’s hood and wrenched it back. The fastening on the figure’s neck snapped and the cloak sprung completely free of the body beneath it, fluttering to the ground some feet away.


Draco was the only one of the horde that did not gasp or squeal with delight. His face did not appear to change at all. If someone didn’t notice the way that his eyes hardened, it would have appeared as though his childhood rival had not, in fact, just been revealed to him, bound and broken.


The boy’s body was as skinny and frail as it had been on the day that Draco had first seen him, but the height and build that he had developed in the nine years since made this obvious neglect and starvation much more noticeably withering. His muggle clothes once again hung off of him as though they were many sizes too large, and the strip of pallid skin that was visible between his baggy t-shirt and his belted leggings showed a disturbing inward curve beneath his ribcage. His hipbones were sharp, and jutting away from his too-thin waist. Where a healthy person had flesh, there was only air. This boy’s hands were, like the half-human man above him, skeletal. His face was still the same shape, but the skin was pulled over cheekbones and eyebrows. The legendary scar on his forehead was stretched and inflamed, and his usual, thick, round eyeglasses were missing. He was bound by strips of magical cloth which had also been used to gag him. He looked a moment from passing out, a moment from death-


-But his eyes were smoldering- piercing- alive. He was glaring up at the Dark Lord and burning hatred and disgust were shining out of those vibrantly green eyes.


“You’ve caught him, my Lord!” Bellatrix cried, stepping forward.


Draco’s uncle Rodolphus, her husband, moved beside her, exclaiming, “The Potter boy- our prisoner at last!”


The other Death Eaters joined in the excited banter until their Lord raised one bony hand, smiling impenitently. Harry was no longer glaring at his captor; now he was simply staring up at him with his chin in the air and his eyebrows raised toward the ceiling, as though unimpressed, and Draco almost smiled.


“He was hiding in a cave,” their leader said, his raspy hiss of a chuckling voice rolling over his followers, “High up on a mountain, the hero of the Wizarding World was cowering away from the rain, hiding in a cave.”


Most of the Death Eaters laughed- high pitched and hysterical. Draco didn’t.


The Dark Lord reached down and touched the tip of one crooked finger under the boy’s upturned chin. Most people would have flinched at the touch, but Harry’s expression- like Draco’s- didn’t change at all. “You’ll be good if I untie you, won’t you?” the man asked, his voice high, as though he were restraining a particularly mad cackle.


The boy made no response. He didn’t move a single, seemingly relaxed, muscle.


The Dark Lord didn’t care. “You’re too smart to try anything,” he continued, the rushed words cracking as he spoke them, making him sound like a teenage boy going through puberty, “You’re too smart to make me angry right now.” As he spoke, he pulled out his wand with his other hand and- holding it rigidly between the pads of his middle finger and his thumb- he pointed it at the boy on the ground. He flicked it upwards and the bandages that held Harry’s wrists, ankles, knees, elbows, and mouth bound uncoiled and shot back into the tip of the wand.


He didn’t massage his wrists or stretch his arms as he placed his hands on his knees. He didn’t stand or change positions. He didn’t try to move away from the most feared wizard in almost a century. He just continued kneeling before the Dark Lord, staring up at him with a sincerely unimpressed expression on his face, and Draco almost couldn’t control the chuckle that wanted to rip out of his throat.


The malevolent, snake-like, wizard still had his wand trained on the boy before him, as he whispered, “You are about to witness my return to youth- my crowning as the new Emperor of the Wizarding World.” He pulled a potion bottle out of the folds of his draping robes and held it above Harry’s head. He flicked his wand again and the top unscrewed itself, dropping into the unruly black curls below. “Do you have nothing to say?”


Harry seemed to think for a moment and then shrugged and said, “Not really.”


A nervous tick twitched visibly under the Dark Lord’s right eye, but he only smiled. “Think of something,” he demanded, his voice high with hysteria, “You always do deliver the most humorous blessings.”


A smirk pulled at the left corner of Harry’s mouth, and after a moment he arched one eyebrow in mocking inquiry before saying, “Happy birthday, Tom?”


A few of the Death Eater’s hissed, but their master’s dark rumble of a chuckle cut them off. “Is that all?”


“Well, I would have gotten you a present,” the boy continued, indulgently, “Being that we have such a long history and everything, but you already have delusions of grandeur, and I just couldn’t think of anything that could compare.”


The cackling laughter grew louder, but Harry wasn’t finished.


“After all,” he said, “What do you get for someone who thinks he has everything?”


The man’s laughter was cut short as he tipped back the potion and swallowed it all, his angular neck showing them as every gulp slid down his throat. He then threw the empty bottle to the ground and watched as it shattered, sending glass shards at his nearest followers. This kind of madness was why Draco kept back, near the door- near the easiest escape.


The Dark Lord began to glow white, the light coming most strongly out of his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, radiating from inside and shining through every opening- every pore- on his serpentine body. He grabbed a handful of wild black hair and forced Harry’s head back. “Watch!” he bellowed at the seemingly bored boy beneath him, causing his Death Eaters to flinch and back away.


Tossing their prisoner to the ground, the Dark Lord unbuttoned his robes and stepped out of them. He was wearing only a loose, silk, crimson shirt which was tucked into a pair of tight, black, leather pants. His grey feet were bare and his hairless grey chest was visible through the unbuttoned V of the long-sleeved top. The white light was emanating even through the silk cloth, and only seemed to be getting stronger.


Draco might have been the only Death Eater not to shy away from the light. He stared openly at his glowing master, and his expression was neutral despite his disgust. Harry, who was also watching the spectacle, moved to sit once more on his knees.


When their Lord had been hidden from view for nearly thirty seconds, the light began to recede and what it left behind was not the snake-like man they served.


“Hello Tom,” Harry said, sounding as bored as he looked.


“Hello Harry,” the man before him crooned, his voice liquid sugar and poison. He had short, tidy black hair and clear blue eyes. His face was young, angular, and pale, but undoubtedly beautiful, and his body filled out the clothes in a way that made his followers stare. One of the female Death Eaters- possibly Bellatrix- made a strange whimpering sound in the back of her throat.


Draco’s eyes narrowed fractionally at the creation before him. No matter how beautiful or young the Dark Lord made himself, the very need to do so never failed to disgust the boy.


“What do you think?” that new razorblades-in-honey voice asked, piercing eyes directed at their vibrant green rival’s.


Harry chuckled. “I think,” he began, “That if you had wanted to be Witch Weekly’s Most Wanted Bachelor, terrorizing and taking over the Wizarding World might not be the most appreciated pastime.”


The slow grin on this strange man’s face sent chills down Draco’s back.


“But then again,” Harry said, looking toward the ceiling and shrugging, “I can’t say that I’m an expert when it comes to women’s minds, so you’d really have to ask one of them.”


The deep, rolling laugh that the new Dark Lord emitted reverberated through Draco’s bones and coiled in the pit of his stomach where it ate away at him like a foreign acid. The man was now holding his wand below his index finger, with his other three fingers and thumb wrapped around it. His whole demeanor changed from mirth to contemplation, and he tapped it against his chin thoughtfully as he began pacing back and forth.


“You’re an intelligent boy,” he said quietly, and although he made no movement to indicate it, he was clearly speaking to Harry, “Possibly even gifted.”


Harry let out an exasperated breath of air, but didn’t interrupt his captor. He only rolled his eyes.


“And yet we are both surrounded by so many unintelligent people,” he made a vague gesture toward his gathered followers as he said this, causing Harry to smirk and most of the Death Eaters to gasp or flinch. Draco only smiled. It was good to be underestimated. “Idiotic people,” the Dark Lord muttered, again waving at the crowd of his own devoted servants, “Stupid people. Have you ever tried to think like a stupid person, Harry?”


When it became clear that he was expected to reply, Harry sighed and said, “I can’t say that I have, Tom. I’ve been too busy escaping the smart ones.”


“Yes,” the pacing man said, sounding detached. He was staring intently at the floor in front of his feet as he walked, as though it held some great mystery. “I’ve tried to think like a stupid person, Harry, and I’ve concluded that what stupid people are-” he stopped pacing for a moment, only to stomp once on the floor, pause, and then resume his frantic movements, “-Are mentally lazy people. I can only fathom their minds while I am analyzing patterns, and I find that all I have to do is stop paying attention. I look at the surface of the pattern-” He stopped, stomped again, and when he continued speaking, his words were rushed, “And I ignore that it is supposed to have some sort of perfect harmony with the rest of the world- ignore that it is a complex and beautiful mathematical puzzle- until all I see are potions ingredients and a list of instructions that I can’t read because-” he stopped and reached down to pick of a shard of glass, “Letters are patterns too… And then I think about thinking like a stupid person, and I begin to think like myself again without meaning too.”


Harry was watching him with an expression that was somewhere between silent inquiry and an awareness that he was in the line of fire.


The Dark Lord turned around and held out the shard of glass. “Slit your wrists, Harry,” he said, his voice empty and his face blank.


Harry took a deep breath and asked, “With that piece of glass?”


The tall man nodded, blinking. Even his eyes were vacant.


Harry gently took the glass from his enemy’s fingers, ignoring the fact that the fingers remained outstretched once the glass was gone, and dragged the sharp side across his own wrists- first his left, then his right. The cuts weren’t deep, barely even bleeding, but the Dark Lord nodded and stood up again, swaying slightly as he turned toward the wall.


“Take him to your rooms, Draco,” he said, his voice still devoid of all attention. Harry’s eyes widened ever so slightly at the sound of Draco’s name, but that was his only reaction. “You can feed him dinner there, and find him somewhere to stay.”


“Yes, my Lord,” Draco responded immediately, striding forward through the crowd. It wasn’t uncommon for their master to have moments like this- to do and say things that didn’t make sense. They were all used to it by now.


Harry stared up into Draco’s white mask as the Death Eater helped him to his feet and cast bandage spells over his wrists. The Dark Lord turned and walked through a door that Draco knew to be a closet. They heard the distinct click of him locking himself in, and Draco led his school rival out of the room.

****

Author's note:
I have part of the second chapter written. I have no idea if I want to write more, but if I get responses telling me that someone wants me to write more, I am more likely to do so. I'm not against criticism. I like criticism. It's helpful. I'm just more likely to write more if there is any semblance of interest.

Also, in case you hadn't noticed, Voldy's gone off the deep end.