Apathy by inspirations
Summary:
Voldemort has won. Harry Potter has been beaten.

This is what happened to the side who lost.

Categories: Dark/Angsty Fics Characters: None
Warnings: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Mental Disorders, Violence
Challenges:
Series: None
Chapters: 1 Completed: Yes Word count: 1448 Read: 2392 Published: 11/05/10 Updated: 11/05/10
Story Notes:
Written for the 2010 Spooky Swap in SPEW. Thank you to Justice for being my amazing beta! xx

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1. Apathy by inspirations

Apathy by inspirations
He stood tall, his pointed nose tilted slightly upwards and his eyes wide open and penetrating -- staring. To somebody who didn’t know him, or just wasn’t looking, they might have perceived the arrogant posture was him.

It used to be. Now it was just an act.

Flashes: green against red. Sparks. The Dark Lord’s grinning face, illuminated. His eyelashes made phantom spiders on his gaunt cheeks.

The war had stripped him of everything that had made him. His family standing was beyond fragile, his hope to survive almost lost, his idea to run seemingly pointless. In his mind, he almost thought he wanted to die.

But he didn’t. His need to survive was one thing he couldn’t let go of.

Now, straight-backed, between his traitor mother and father, Draco Malfoy looked across the room. Never would he have dreamed of having a seat in this place, and every time that thought occurred to him, a little part of him flaked away inside.

He’d done so much to try to remain safe! So had his mother and his father, who cared for nothing -- nothing -- but him. Not one of them had done enough to preserve what they’d had.

Now the three of them stood, waiting, in a room full of Mudbloods and blood traitors. And to those Death Eaters standing above the rest, he -- Draco Malfoy, one of the purest -- was nothing but that. He was just another filthy blood traitor to them.

And if he couldn’t accept his new status in a society he once sneered at, he would die.

The Dark Lord’s magnified voice rang across the dignified masses, making several of them start in fear and glance around, hands groping for wands that weren’t there. ‘I have won, and Harry Potter is nothing but dead. Several of you are going to join him in the next hour. The worst punishment is death.’

Dementors weaved through the crowd. As they passed, shivers reverberated around them, almost like a chain reaction, a ripple in the water. Helplessness and darkness overtook people’s expressions, and neighbours hugged each other as they tried for any respite from the pain. A Dementor passed behind Draco, its mouth skimming the back of his neck. A sucking sound rattled from its throat before it passed on to Narcissa. In his head, all Draco could see was a leech, a leech he couldn’t escape. It pulled him in, held him, squeezed him, made him surrender. He shook himself -- It’s not real, not real, not real. This can’t be real -- can’t, can’t be real.

A mere second had passed since the Dark Lord’s message had echoed through the hall. An anguished cry played back to the towering line of black-robed Death Eaters. Their stance and costume was too similar to the Dementors for Draco’s liking, and he couldn’t help shrinking from them slightly.

‘You haven’t won yet, Voldemort!’ Kingsley Shacklebolt shouted.

‘Yeah!’ Ron Weasley backed him up.

The Death Eaters extended their wand arms, and before either man could react, a beam of green light had hit them each squarely in the chest.

Harry Potter’s limp body hit the hard, stone floor. And then a beat of silence.

‘Ron!’ Hermione Granger screamed, throwing herself down next to his corpse. Draco could see the tears coursing from her eyes, and the frantic way her fingers paddled his robes. The Weasley family closed around them, and the grief that surrounded their circle made Draco truly realise what kind of a world he lived in. This knowledge hit him, forceful, making him acknowledge the truth in a way he never had before.

But he and his family were standing with the likes of the Weasleys. So, despite the fact that his side had won, he was far from safe. Even further from safe than he had been in the past two years.

‘Silence!’

Everybody’s eyes found the Death Eaters, but the Weasleys didn’t move away from their son -- their brother.

‘Molly Weasley.’ The Dark Lord’s polite tone swelled, and filled the room again. ‘I sentence you to torture, followed by death, for the murder of Bellatrix Lestrange.’

Draco tried to feel anger for his aunt’s demise. He found he couldn’t.

Mrs Weasley screamed. ‘She killed hundreds! She drove people to insanity! Bellatrix Lestrange is the only one I ever killed!’

The screaming began, but the Dark Lord spoke. His words immobilised them all. Effortless. Power was visible, a field of it all around him.

The Dark Lord continued, drowning out her tortured cries with his magnified voice. ‘Hermione Granger – Muggle-born who has been on the run with Harry Potter for months. I sentence you to the Dementor’s Kiss, followed by seven years in Azkaban.’

Draco watched as more tears welled in Hermione’s eyes, and she swabbed them away angrily. Her face was passionate, hurting, but she pursed her lips and contained all sound. Draco could feel her anger, for what he thought was perhaps a punishment worse than death – he shivered at the thought of having your soul taken away. He started to step forward, needing to say something to Hermione. But then he checked himself.

‘The Malfoy family,’ boomed the Dark Lord’s voice across the room, catching Draco’s attention and dragging his eyes away from Hermione. He resumed his stiff-backed pose, head tilted upwards. ‘Narcissa, you lied to me about Potter’s death. For that, I punish your whole family. For you, Narcissa, you may remain free. However, your kin will be in Azkaban for five years, rotting because of your foolishness. Visiting is not permitted. Is that torture enough for you, Narcissa? Not that I care for your answer; I’m not open to negotiation from blood traitors.’

A cruel laugh rose like heat from the Death Eaters. The hairs on the back of Draco’s neck lifted at the sound.

The Dark Lord continued, but Draco ceased to hear. He felt numb as Narcissa pulled him and Lucius into a tight hug, her tears falling unashamedly into Draco’s hair. He couldn’t believe he was going to Azkaban, but, at the same time, he accepted what he’d already known would happen. All he could manage emotionally was relief that he wasn’t going to die…

Time raced away, lost. Lives wasted...

Lucius preceded Draco into Azkaban, flanked by two Dementors. Two metres behind him, Draco was a mirror image, walking sluggishly into the austere prison fortress. They passed cell after cell of moaning, snivelling prisoners. Neither man looked at them, repulsed by others’ weak response to something all their friends were suffering. Some prisoners spat through the bars as the Malfoys passed, or yelled convoluted obscenities -- but still neither man looked around.

One cell out of the dozens was silent, though, and through the grimness that engulfed him in the Dementors’ company, Draco looked around.

Stillness permeated the air in her cell. The only sound was the dragging of his footsteps, and the Dementors’ rattling breaths. It was like looking into a cage. The small square space was dark and hard to see into because the colours blended and ran together. Black, white, grey. She both stood out from the blandness and blended in. Her head was on her knees, which she hugged tight to her chest, her knuckles showing bone white from the pressure. The once bushy hair was flat -- greasy and wispy against her skull -- and the eyes that stared out of her blank face were empty. He looked at her, searching for the person she’d been. But there was nothing, and it bowled him over in pity. His eyes caught hers momentarily before he passed. They burned his retinas; they imprinted themselves in his mind’s eye. Full of nothing -- emotionless -- all he could think was that it was as if somebody had gouged them out of her sockets with sharp fingernails, leaving behind only two nasty, bloody hollows.

He was led into the cell next to hers, while Lucius was taken to his. The bars clanged shut behind him, and the Dementors’ rattling breaths faded away.

Half an hour later, as the light began to fade, still all Draco could see in his mind’s eye were those empty spaces.

The only sound he heard through the wall separating Hermione Granger from him was a single, detached sniff. That alone made Draco want to scream like the other inmates.

Anything had to be better than apathy.
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