How the War Was Won

[A/N - Let me state again that each of the chapters listed here is it's own story. Non of them are in any way related, though many of them are dark and ambiguous. I have yet to give you straight up smut in here, but I'm working toward it.]
--

Azkaban is depressing. There's no way around it, you walk in and you're depressed.

Even Harry Potter felt the strain of the place. He supposed it was the atmosphere, the dank stone walls and the perpetual damp of the storm tossed sea outside had impacted him deeply.

And he was here to see Draco Malfoy. That was depressing in itself.

---

Malfoy had demonstrated surprising loyalty to the Light, in the end. In the last three months of the War Malfoy had come to the Order with information that had been vital to the resistance. Harry had worked with him, however peripherally, on several stings and the owl that had given Harry Voldemort's location just before the final confrontation had been signed with Malfoy's lazy scrawl.

And a heart. Harry had ignored that.

The Death Eaters had been merciless during the final confrontation, as was their wont, and Draco had been in their custody deep within their encampments, for several hours. The tortures he had endured had destroyed his mind utterly.

Harry had testified on Draco's behalf during his trial, but the young Malfoy had been found playing with Dennis Creevey's entrails. Harry was certain Malfoy hadn't killed him, only been set loose when the Death Eater encampment broke up and stumbled on Dennis' corpse. But the evidence had been enough to send Draco here.

Azkaban was depressing.

---

"Why am I here, Neville?"

Neville Longbottom was unnaturally cheery in contrast to his surroundings. He had actually volunteered for this post and he certainly filled it was more compassion than his predecessors had, keeping the cells clean and providing prompt medical care to his wards, despite the fact that many of them were confirmed Death Eaters serving life sentences for War crimes.

He shrugged his round shoulders, his posture as evasive as his words. "Malfoy has been exhibiting some very... odd behaviors. I thought you might be able to help us treat him."

"What sort of behaviors?" Harry was skeptical. Neville had a team of highly trained MediWizards at his call night and day, not to mention his own vast garden of medical plants and herbs on the grounds that were the ingredients in his potent healing potions. He couldn't imagine anything he could andle that Neville and his team couldn't.

Neville evaded his eyes again. "I think you had beter see for yourself."

Harry only sighed.

---

Malfoy had been assigned to the C ward, a long hall that had been painted a muted lemon (doubtless at Neville's insistence). The hall was lined at uniform intervals with heavy iron doors that had been painted white. The cold iron prevented the magical static that clung around most wizards from entering the cells with them, and Harry felt the presence of more iron behind the paint and ancient plaster.

"Pretty serious about keeping the random mojo out, aren't you Nev?"

"All my C warders are fragile. They don't need casual interference." Neville approached the only guarded door in the hall with Harry trailing behind him and spoke quietly with the posted guard. "Any change?"

"No, sir. Perkins and Murray have got him under control now, but he goes right back to it when he's not watched."

Neville pursed his lips. "I've got Harry Potter here with me, Davis, and I want him to speak with Mr. Malfoy." The guard nodded and had moved to open the door when Neville spoke again. "Privately."

Both Harry and Davis' eyes cut to Neville but Davis continued opening the door after a brief pause. "Guys, out."

A voice spoke tersely from inside the cell, "He's just gonna star-"

"Out." Harry hadn't heard Neville take that tone since they had met on the field in the Confrontation, right before the other boy had killed Bellatrix Lestrange with his bare hands. He didn't care for it much.

Two guards emerged reluctantly from Malfoy's cell and one padded away down the hall immediately, while the other joined Davis and Neville by the door for a whispered conference. Harry could easily have extended his magic to listen in, but he didn't care to know if Neville was still using that voice.

"Mr. Potter?" Davis was speaking to him now, and Neville was reading from a clipboard hung by the door of the cell. "You can go in now, Mr. Potter."

"Luck, Harry." Neville smiled that bashful smile at him and almost made Harry forget that he had drowned a woman in a muddy puddle of blood.

Harry nodded in return, and Neville's smile grew sad as he turned to leave the ward.

Harry steeled himself and stepped toward the door. From his vantage point he saw only a sliver of a charcoal gray room with laminate flooring, a nightstand bolted to the floor with its corners padded, and a bit of a padded bedframe that was presumably bolted down as well.

Just before he entered, the guard that had been inside the cell with Malfoy caught his arm. "Don't let him fool you, Mr. Potter."

Harry glanced down at the name tag on the man's vest and spoke as softly as he could. "Into what, Mr. Perkins? Thinking he's sane?"

"Thinking he's harmless." The guard held Harry's eyes for a long moment, then turned away as if frightened by what he'd seen. Harry wasn't entirely safe himself, after all.

---

"Malfoy?" The entire room was as bland as his glimpse had been, and Harry shuddered briefly when the door shut behind him. Half an hour and I'm out of here. I can handle this.

Harry's eyes found Draco crouched in the far corner of the cell facing the walls. Malfoy was skinnier now than he had been in the courtroom, Harry could count his ribs through the thin cotton shirt he wore, and his blonde hair had been neatly, if savagely, trimmed to fall just above his shoulders.

"Harry." Malfoy didn't turn.

"You remember me."

"Only."

Harry stood in the center of the small cell, at the foot of the small bed, and when Malfoy turned he sat down abruptly.

Malfoy looked like - like the kind of hell the Devil always promises in dreams. He was too thin, yes. But his hair hung in an almost-white fall over a face where a lifelong tendency to pointiness had become some kind of fey delicacy, an alien sort of loveliness. His eyes seemed bleached somehow and unnaturally bright, Harry was reminded of sunlight on well polished silver and felt the same visceral desire to cover and avert his own eyes. His long fingered hands were tangled together in front of him and his intense gaze flitted between them and Harry rapidly.

There was blood down his front. Blood on his hands. Blood caked beneath his nails, blood dried on his lips, blood matted in his eyebrows. And as Harry stared, horrified, Malfoy's alien smile sent flakes of the stuff drifting through the air.

"You like it, Harry?"

Harry thought he might be sick. Carved into Malfoy's forehead, in ghastly relief, was a lightening bolt.

---

[I'm gonna call this one unfinished.]

[Scratch that. This one's done.]