Title: End of Days (The First Night)

Author: albydarned

Gift for: Karadin

Pairing: Vamp!Harry/Draco

Rating: NC-17

Summary: Draco doesn’t need anybody, because he has his ghosts. Draco doesn’t need life, because all he wants is oblivion. Draco doesn’t need Harry Potter, except that he does, and always has.

Warnings: (oh my …) Character Deaths (obviously), insanity, depression, angst, prostitution, illusions to non-con (not descriptive), h/c, slash (now that’s just obvious), bloodplay.

Word Count (this chapter): 2,374

Author’s Note: Set after Book 5, although Inferi are mentioned. Draco and Harry are both 25. As far as the ‘conversion’ bits go, I went with the Buffy/Anne Rice method (blood exchange). Chapters 1-3 are in past tense, so whenever a person speaks, it is in italics … Chapter 4 is in present-tense, so all dialogue is in normal text.

Original Request: vampharry/draco r to nc-17 on balcony

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter series, including all of its characters and ideas, belong to JKR. I only wish that I had thought of it first (because if I had, I would have been the coolest ten-year-old on the block).

The First Night

The ghosts are there because you need them.

Your flat is on the seventh floor of a muggle apartment complex built of red bricks and stone that has crumbled on the edges. Rustic, your mother says, trying to hide her obvious displeasure. A pathetic waste of money, your father counters, but their opinions don’t matter. The truth is, your muggle flat is supposed to be downtrodden and shoddy. It’s supposed to be the exact opposite of your childhood home, so low-class that no one, not even ghosts, could ever find you.

You should have known that your plan would fail miserably. They always do. And instead of offering you a place of luxury, a hiding spot from the flashing cameras and interviewers who want the first exclusive interview with The Amazing War Hero Draco Malfoy, Death Eater-turned-Order Spy of the Finest Quality, it has instead secluded you. It has trapped you so that no one would ever find you, so that no one would ever hear you scream.

You haven’t screamed since the first night anyways, not since you saw him, the great Harry Potter, Savior of the Wizarding World and Tragic Martyr leaning against your open door, a knowing smirk on his face as he commented about the lack of security your home offered.

“Not even a protection charm, Malfoy?” he had asked, cocking an eyebrow. “No shielding charm?”

You could have answered him in many ways, some more truthful than others. The spells I cast could be traced, and I don’t want anyone to find me would be semi-honest; telling him that you hadn’t cast a single spell with your wand since you pointed it at your own mother and watched her crumple to the ground (because every time you touch it you can still hear her scream, can still hear her calling you a murderer) would probably be even more correct.

You might not have answered him at all … after all, there were so many questions he himself would have to answer. Because there are a lot of things that you don’t know, you never really paid attention that well in school after all, but you do know that the dead stay that way. They don’t occasionally pull themselves out of the ground to catch up with their old school-nemesis. The dead are dead which means that they are dead; except in the case of Inferi, zombies, necromancy, ghosts, vampires…

Apparently even the simplest of truths aren’t really true, and you don’t really know anything at all.

In the end, a simple scream was far more appropriate a response than anything else. And that is what you did; you screamed and screamed until a chilled hand pressed against your mouth, muffling your cries. Then you fought, struggling with your hands and legs to pry whatever it was that Potter was off of you, but that didn’t work either as you found yourself easily pressed into a wall, your hands pinned high above your head and your legs crushed in between powerful thighs.

Your eyes were wide with panic; you could see your reflection in Potter’s eyes, which were twinkling with dark amusement. You felt like someone was having you on, that everyone was in one the joke and laughing at you, which was utterly ridiculous because it was just you and Potter, his hand over your mouth and suddenly you realized that you couldn’t breathe … hadn’t been able to for quite some time actually …

The hand that held your mouth pulled away and your burning lungs instinctively pulled in all of the oxygen that they could, but it was too much, too fast, and you were suddenly seized by a fit of coughing, your body shaking hard despite the tight hold he had on you. Your lungs were on fire, your throat became sore, your eyes watered with the intensity of the coughs … and throughout it all, he was laughing softly, his eyes filled with mirth.

“I forgot,” he whispered softly once the coughs subsided, “how often humans need to breath.” He didn’t let you go, but with his free hand he caressed your face, your hair, petting you as though you were a pet. His pet.

You wanted to speak, but you could not. It had been weeks since you had said a word; you hadn’t left the flat for as long as you could remember except to get food and supplies. No one who knew you knew where you were, and no one who knew where you were cared to know you. Your perfect hiding place had become your perfect tomb.

He was staring at you then, not saying anything but raking his eyes over your body nonetheless. You shivered under his gaze, against the frigid body that held you so close, and wondered how this had happened to you.

“If I let you go, will you promise not to run?” he asked. “Will you promise not to say anything at all?”

You nodded; he said not to speak, so you stayed silent. There was nowhere for you to run to, so it was unnecessary for him to hold you. The small, undying part of you that was still a Slytherin demanded that you allow him to release you so that you could find out what the situation was and evaluate any possible attempts of escape or expose any benefits to yourself.

He released you, and you dropped to the floor in an undignified manner. Dear dead Lucius mocked you in your head; you studiously ignored him. You no longer believed yourself to be insane although you heard the dead speak to you; occasionally you even saw them in mirrors and in shadows. The dead had never touched you before though, never manhandled you and pressed you up against a wall; you decided to reevaluate your mental health after Potter left.

He didn’t wait for you to stand, instead bending over and picking you up easily, cradling you to his chest as though you were a child, carrying you to the main room in your flat, setting you down gently on your mattress, the only furniture that you owned. You had destroyed everything else you owned when you set fire to Malfoy Manor, your bank accounts were frozen and you had no steady job to provide for yourself. You lived on dwindling funds that you had procured from your father’s study before you sent yourself into exile and what little money you could make on the streets.

Potter wasn’t looking at you anymore by that point; his gaze traveled over empty white walls, a small stove and food cooler in the corner that had come with the flat, a single glass door that led out to the iron-wrought balcony which was about a year away from falling apart altogether.

“This was not what I expected to find a person like you,” Potter said casually, his tone low and his speech slow, as though he was actually thinking about every word before uttering it. The Draco that you once were made a rude comment, something about how running with Weasley for so many years finally caused irreparable brain damage, but the Draco that you are now stayed silent; there was nothing to say, not really.

“What happened to all of your things, all of your riches and possessions that you were always holding over our heads?” Potter asked, before his eyebrows rose dramatically. “Oh yes, the fire, I remember now. Such a mystery that was; no witnesses, no apparent cause or sign of arson, not even a suspect. I suppose that explains the décor, or more appropriately the lack of décor, but not why you’re here. I’m wondering why you didn’t set up somewhere else, someplace more like yourself. After all, you are a war hero, one with a tainted past even, and I know the masses love that. You didn’t need to turn to muggle poverty.”

You said nothing, because he told you not to and because it was all true. You could have gone anywhere in the wizarding world and made yourself a home. The Malfoy accounts were all frozen and inaccessible to you, but you were still an educated wizard with a long list of services to the Ministry; you could have applied for a number of governmental jobs, gotten into politics, created a new image for the Malfoy name.

“It’s quite funny, actually. Mostly everyone believes that you’re dead. After the fire, they put an entire team of Aurors on your case, trying to figure out what had happened to you. They found your mother, well, her bones at least, in the wreckage, but no sign of you. They’ve traced your magic, but you haven’t cast any spells, at least not with your wand, since the night you disappeared. No one has reported seeing you in two years, and no one would ever guess that Draco Malfoy would have run off to become a muggle.” Potter laughed suddenly, eyeing you again. “Those ministry blighters are all the same, aren’t they? Dumb as a first-year and far too confident in their abilities. I almost pity them sometimes.”

You never really knew Potter all that well, even after you traded your Dark Mark in for a position in the Order, but you don’t think he ever spoke so negatively about the Ministry, even when he was hard-pressed by Aurors to help out with a mission or forced to sit through interview after interview with the Minister as he tried to calm an ever-more-panicked magical community. Something was definitely wrong with Potter … aside from his being dead and still standing in your flat, but you weren’t too sure about that yet. You were still unsure if this was all real or just a very elaborate hallucination.

Potter rolled his eyes and folded his arms across his chest, leaning back against the wall opposite of you. “This must be very strange for you, I understand. You’ve no idea what I’m here for, do you? No idea what’s going on?”

You shake your head. Of course you’ve got no idea what’s going on, whatever made him think otherwise?

“You really have abandoned all things magic then, haven’t you? Otherwise this wouldn’t be so confusing, I think. Or maybe it would, I’ve never really been all that sensitive to how other people are feeling. I suppose that’s just my Gryffindor side, empathy’s really not a trait we possess. I probably should tell you the long, tragic story, shouldn’t I?”

You didn’t really know if he should have told you or not, or if it would have made any difference had he done so. Part of you was curious, true, but that part of yourself was long-dead and buried, kind of like the ghosts that kept popping up into your life, still present, but easy to ignore.

“But I don’t really have the time or energy tonight to get into that. The sun is going to come up soon, and I still have a few things left to do yet. When I come back, tomorrow night, I’ll give you the whole thing, and then we’ll talk. I’m sure you’ll think of something to say by then. You always had something do say, didn’t you, Malfoy?”

You nod; it’s true, you did. Once upon a time at least, but your story doesn’t have a happily ever after, does it?

“And don’t bother trying to run off and hide. I’ll only find you again, and then you won’t get any of your answers. Not that I think you’ll leave or do anything to stop me, you’re too curious for that, but nonetheless, know that I would find you.” Potter’s look became dangerous, and you were suddenly amazed at how expressive his eyes were. Eyes weren’t an attribute you normally noticed in a person, as you normally focused on the more important aspects such as breast size and the amount in the family’s bank account, but Potter’s were mesmerizing. He caught you staring and smirked; you weren’t embarrassed, after all, there was nothing left to be embarrassed about, so you kept on looking.

But your eyes became dry, and you were forced to blink. And a second later, when you reopened your eyes and looked to were Potter had been standing, he was gone, as though he had never been there at all. You were alone again, but suddenly that thought wasn’t as comforting as it normally was, was it? You reached for the thin blanket covering your bare mattress and pulled it around your bony frame (you should really eat more, it’s not healthy to be so skinny), shivering with cold and the last vestiges of panic.

The site of a pale wrist caught your eye, your own skin, marred with bruises in the shape of fingers. Someone had gripped you there, hard enough to nearly crush the frail bones underneath, but while your mind was telling you that it was Potter who had held them, you couldn’t be sure. Perhaps you had imagined the whole thing, and during your hallucination you had grabbed on to your own wrist, hard enough to bruise?

But there was a bruise on the other wrist as well, and you know that there was no way you could have grabbed both of your wrists at the same time. For a moment you were happy, or as happy as you could ever feel, but then another wave of cold fear took you, and you pulled the blanket even tighter around your small frame to stop the shakes. If you weren’t crazy, then all of it was real. Potter had really been there, and he was really coming back the next night.

Hopefully to finish you off for good, my pathetic son, Lucius told him, and you closed your eyes tightly and shook your head fiercely to block out the sound of his sneering, but there was no stopping it. How could there be when the sound was coming from inside your head?

You deserve death, blood-traitor. For betraying the cause, for destroying our home, for killing your mother and I; you deserve a slow painful death before you come and join us in our hell.